


Not Now, Nor Never

by Ely_Baby



Series: Les Cousins Dangereux [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Cousin Incest, Drama, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Romance, Teen Pregnancy, Tissue Warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-23
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-27 10:43:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 14
Words: 65,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/977831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ely_Baby/pseuds/Ely_Baby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love between cousins isn't globally accepted, some people think it's immoral and in some places it's considered illegal. And what happens when this love brings to something else? A baby is growing in a girl's belly and the emotional consequences will be devastating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Words You Cannot Take Back

**Author's Note:**

> This story has been thoroughly edited and revised from its original version, and I have to thank my beta-reader, [BrainyBlonde223](http://archiveofourown.org/users/BrainyBlonde223/profile/), for her invaluable help. She is truly fantastic. The amazing banner was created by [pinefir](http://pinefir.deviantart.com/).
> 
>   
>    
> 

***

Rose Weasley watched the little, flying figures up in the air; they seemed so graceful and small from where she stood. Rose could barely tell her cousin from the other players, but James Sirius Potter was the one who zoomed in front of the three big circles at the far end of the pitch, trying not to let the Quaffle through. He was shouting orders, screaming at his own teammates. He was as aggressive as he would be during a match, even if it was just training. 

Rose leaned her head against the wooden door of the Gryffindor changing room, sighing deeply. It was freezing cold in the Quidditch Pitch and she was grateful that the game mattered very little in her life. Unlike most of her friends, she didn’t feel obligated to sit out there cheering for her fellow housemates while they were having a training session.

“Hey Weasley, what are you doing here?” A boy smirked to Rose when he saw her there all alone.

She raised her eyes, taking in the boy that was walking towards her. He was a tall sixth year with golden hair and a tanned complexion wearing the Gryffindor Quidditch uniform, his broom over his shoulder.

“Come to see me?” he asked, stepping towards her.

Rose snorted. “You wish, Wood,” she replied coldly.

The boy laughed as he put down his broom, moving his face closer to hers. “Actually, yes, I do,” he quipped, keeping his voice just a whisper.

“Wood,” a sharp voice called from behind the boy, “get away from her.”

James Sirius Potter glared at Wood from the middle of the Quidditch pitch as he stalked towards them. His quick movements brought him to Rose’s side swiftly, broomstick in his hand. Around him the other players were landing like falling stars, and soon most of the Gryffindors entered the changing room. The murmurs of muffled greetings were all that could be heard. Some nodded as they passed, each acknowledging her in their own way.

Wood raised his hands defensively. “We were just talking, James,” he said, grinning, “I don’t want to touch your little cousin, here.”

James walked up to where he was, easily towering over him a few inches. “I’m sure you didn’t want to,” he said, his hands on his hips, “You better go and change now.”

“Yes, captain,” he answered, mocking a military salute. He turned towards Rose and blew her a kiss that was answered with her tongue sticking out as he burst into laughter.

James looked at her, lips curving into a weak smile. “I better go and change too,” he said, as he began walking past her.

“James,” she called to him as he opened the changing room door, “I need to talk to you.” Her voice was just a bit more than a whisper and her hands were trembling.

James turned towards her with a smile. “Sure,” he replied, “can you wait while—”

She shook her head. “It’s very important,” she interrupted him, her voice just a murmur.

James cast a glance at the changing room and then closed the door at his back, leaning his broom against the wall. “Let’s go this way,” he gestured to his cousin as he led her through a door that brought them out of the Quidditch pitch and towards the Lake.

They walked slowly side by side, the cold air mercilessly whipping against their faces. Rose shivered, wrapping her warm jacket tighter around her. James, still warmed from Quidditch training, didn’t feel the cold as he should have.

They reached the Lake and stopped along the narrow shore line. There was no other sound but the hooting of some wild owls in the distance.

Suddenly James turned towards her, cupping her chilled cheeks in his hands as he kissed her. Before Rose could stop her cousin, his fingers slowly entangled themselves in her hair while his other hand explored her well covered back as he pulled her closer. His tongue traced over her lips, but when she didn’t respond to the kiss he slowly moved away, letting her go as he searched her eyes for understanding.

He frowned slightly. “What’s wrong?”

Rose looked away. “I need to talk to you,” she repeated.

“Talk then,” he said as he lowered his head and brought his lips to her neck. “Because I want some action,” his breath washed over her sensitive skin.

Rose shivered as she pushed him away, her face white and scared, her eyes shining with restrained tears. “James, I—”

James frowned. “Wait.” His finger flew to her lips. “If you’re saying that you want to leave me… just don’t.”

Rose grabbed her cousin’s wrist and kept it in place as she kissed his cold digit. “I don’t want to leave you,” she whispered.

“Then what is it?”

Her eyes filled with fear. “I’m pregnant,” she murmured so quietly that he almost didn’t hear it.

James’ lips curled in a soft smile, while a weak chuckle escaped his mouth. “You’re joking,” his voice was hopeful.

Rose shook her head as she brought her cousin’s hand to her belly, gulping as his palm tried to feel her through her many protective layers.

“I can’t feel anything,” he said as icily as the wind that blew around them.

“It’s only been two months,” she replied anxiously.

“And is it mine?” he asked, his hand moving away from her flat stomach.

Rose backed away, her eyes wide with pain and shock. “James, who do you think I am?” she couldn’t hide the hurt in her voice.

James darkened. “Sorry,” he replied sullenly, “I’m just…” His words trailed away as he looked towards the Lake. His brown eyes filled with anger and fear, his fists closed so tightly that his knuckles were turning white. He felt the urge to seize something and throw it in the water. “You have to get rid of it,” he said, his voice hard like the rocks under their feet.

Rose’s lips parted slightly in surprise. “What?” she mouthed.

“You don’t want to keep it, do you?” he asked coldly, stubbornly looking away.

Rose swallowed hard. “I-I don’t want to kill it,” she said quickly.

“Rose,” his voice was commanding as he looked into her eyes, “you can’t keep it.”

“Why not?” she asked as her demeanour darkened before crossing her arms. She felt rebellious and betrayed by his reaction. She by no means had expected it to be wonderful, but she hadn’t imagined it to be so awful.

James rolled his eyes.

“We’re cousins, Rose,” he blurted, “we shouldn’t be together in the first place.” He kicked one of the pebbles on the shore and sent it into the water. “Why do you think we’ve kept this a secret? It’s something that would not be accepted, your father would have a heart attack!”

She tucked some of her stray curls behind her ear, her famous ‘Know-It-All’ look replacing her once pained expression. “First cousins can marry, it’s not like we are siblings,” she snapped.

“But the possibility for the baby to have health problems is so high,” he snapped back, his darkened eyes flashing with rage.

She bit her bottom lip. “I don’t care,” she replied curtly. “There are surely spells that can be performed to prevent the baby from being—”

James snorted, throwing his arms into the air. “You think you can control everything, don’t you?” he asked her. “Well, guess what? You can’t control something like this.” He grabbed her upper arms almost painfully and shook her. “You have to terminate this pregnancy.” His dark eyes were commanding, intimidating.

“James, you’re hurting me,” she complained, pushing on his chest with her fists.

“Say that you’ll bring it to an end,” he continued, ignoring Rose’s protests as he shook her once more. “Say it!”

“James, no!” she screamed.

“Say it!” He ducked his head, closing the distance between their faces as he yelled back. Startled, Rose backed away, placing a foot on a moss covered rock. Losing her balance she fell backwards pulling James down on top of her.

They lay still on the frozen ground and chilled rocks. James shook furiously; his fingers still grasped her arms as his face hovered menacingly above her. Rose let out a pain-filled moan as she tried to move from the uncomfortable position she found herself in as her back throbbed.

James pushed a knee on the rocks, his body hovering above her as he balanced. He looked down at Rose before moving to sit back on his heels. “It’s all my fault,” he murmured as he covered his face with his hands, while Rose tried to sit up – breathless from the pain.

“James,” she murmured, stretching a hand towards him.

“We weren’t supposed to be together,” he said harshly, pushing away her hand. “You’re beautiful,” he continued bitterly, “and the fact that we were doing something so forbidden drove me mad.” He glanced at his cousin. She was sitting opposite to him, his eyes on her causing her cheeks to flush – her bushy, red hair a messy tangle of knots and dirt. “We should have been more careful.”

“James,” she repeated slowly.

“I just wanted to be with you,” he carried on, “you make me want you with all my body and mind. Being with you it’s so thrilling, exhilarating – _prohibited_.” His hand grasped a rock, throwing it in frustration, watching it sink into the dark lake water.

“What?” she asked, her hands trying to cover the horrified look consuming her face, “What are you talking about?”

James looked at her. “Are you surprised?” his voice was icy as he spoke. “It’s surely what you felt too.”

She shook her head as her hands slipped away from her mouth, chocolate eyes wide with horror. “No,” she muttered as she threw herself at her cousin. “No! I’ve been with you because I loved you. I _love_ you!” her voice a pained scream. She grabbed his Quidditch uniform and pulled at it forcefully, her face screwed with pain. “I love you!”

James fell backwards, his cousin blanketed over him. He lay still on the icy ground, watching while Rose clung to his uniform. The light tinkling of his buttons falling to the stones below him filled his ears. James didn’t have the energy to fight her; he wasn’t even sure at this point that he even wanted to. With a few words he had devastated her world, and now, with even less – she had destroyed his.

James grabbed a hold of Rose’s wrists, attempting to hold her still as she fought to beat against his chest. She tried desperately to shake him off, but she was no match for his strength. “Take back what you said,” he whispered urgently.

Rose let out a desperate cry. As she moved her head backwards, her hair fell away from her eyes revealing the hot tears that streamed down her cheeks. She tried to move away again, but James kept her in place.

“Take it back,” his voice was more forceful this time, “take what you said back!”

Rose shook her head, trying hard to escape her cousin’s grip.

“Take that—”

“I can’t!” she screamed. She pulled her hands away from his powerful grasp, falling back on the hard rocks. Her chest was heaving quickly under her coat, her eyes wide with anger while her skin reddened from the cold.

“Rose, you don’t mean it,” James said weakly, pushing himself up into a sitting position.

Rose wiped her tears away with anger as she pushed her hands on the frozen ground to stand. Nimble fingers moved to smooth the skirt that rolled up during their struggle, her palms brushing the scratches now adorning her tights.

James stood up as well before taking a step in her direction. “Rose, you can’t—”

“Don’t talk to me.” Her voice was as iced as the wind that twirled her curly hair into her face. “Never again.”

James stretched a hand towards her, but she dodged his advance and turned to walk stiffly away as her cold hands stuffed into her pockets. She was moving quickly away, her Gryffindor scarf flying wildly in the wind. 

“Wait!” She heard James' uncertain steps as he slipped and stomped across the stones behind her. Before she could even turn, her cousin had grabbed a hold of her arm another time forcing her to face him once again.

“Rose,” he said – his usually steady and confident voice was transformed into a shaky whisper, “you can’t keep it.”

Rose jerked away from him. “Don’t worry, _cousin_ ,” she said, her voice full of malice and pain, “I’m not going to tell anyone that it’s yours.”

James’ eyes widened in surprise, “Rose, listen—”

“No, James,” she snapped, “you listen! I’ve been a fool. I thought that you loved me the way I loved you, but I was wrong.” She let out a snort, as she shook the pain from her eyes. “You have left me with no other option but to play by your rules. Shall we start now? _I hate you_ – are you happy now?” she spoke the words with no emotion as she internally struggled to recant her earlier ‘I love you’.

James half-shook his head, his eyebrows joined on his forehead. He opened his mouth to say something, but no sound escaped his lips. He brought his hands back to her upper arms. He pulled her against his chest, crashing her head against his body as he embraced her in a rib-crushing hug.

He expected her to try to free herself – to curse him, but instead James felt Rose melt into tears against his lurid uniform. Her little body trembled with sobs and sniffles while her hands reached for his back, hugging him against her with similar force.

James let her upper arms go as his fingers entangled themselves into her tousled curls. Caressing her hair, he leaned his forehead against the top of her head before pressing a gentle kiss between her eyes. “I would not be happy if you hated me,” his voice, a low whisper that he hoped would soothe her, “the thought breaks my heart.”

Rose moved away slightly. “It was just a game to you,” she murmured as her tears continued to streak her pained face, “you didn’t give a damn about me.”

James took a deep breath. Was what she said the truth? He didn’t know. He had surely said that, but he was shocked and upset. She surely couldn’t hold that against him – people don’t always have the proper words in a moment like that, do they? He just had to get a grip on his feelings and understand what he felt for her.

“You are beautiful,” he started, “and I had a crush on you. I’ve had a crush on you for years, even before we started at Hogwarts.”

Rose tried to move away, internally struggling between wanting to hear the words he spoke and knowing it would simply be too painful, but James held her tightly against his body.

“Wait,” he murmured, “let me speak.” He waited until she relaxed a bit in his arms before he continued. “I wanted you, but I knew that I couldn’t have you – you’re my cousin, after all. You are Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron’s daughter; you are my Mum and Dad’s niece – _my first cousin_.” He sighed. “And then that summer at the Burrow, I couldn’t resist, you were… you were…”

“James…”

“No, let me finish,” he insisted, “I knew that it was wrong, but I couldn’t stay away from you, I thought I was going to die if I didn’t touch you, and I dreamt of you. Merlin, I dreamt of you every night and even every day. I just wanted to be with you, because it was exciting, thrilling, and even dangerous. If they discovered us I knew that we would have been in trouble, and you were everything I needed. I couldn’t be away from you, even for a few hours, without my heart aching.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes; he had spoken so quickly that for a moment he feared Rose hadn’t understood a word of his rant.

Rose shook her head softly as her mind reeled to understand the words he had spoken. “You,” she murmured, “you just wanted to be with me.”

“I needed to be with you.”

“Because it was dangerous…” she said, “and it sent shivers down your spine, didn’t it?”

“Because you are beautiful,” he breathed against her forehead, “I couldn’t believe that you had chosen me amongst all the boys that were trying to have a go with you.”

“I loved you,” she replied, her fingers gripping his arms almost painfully. “I chose you, because I loved you.”

James hugged her even tighter. “Rose…”

“I’m going to keep the baby,” her voice was firm with decision, “and you will not stop me.” She freed herself easily from her shocked cousin. Rose turned on her heels and ran up toward the castle, leaving James to contemplate her last words that hung in the air around him.


	2. Foreboding Discoveries

***

_Rose pushed the kitchen door open. Her father was sitting at the table, the Daily Prophet in his hands while he absentmindedly sipped one of those Muggle drinks that her mother had mastered preparing._ _Rose took a deep breath and stepped inside, her hands drawing circles on the swell of stomach_. _She walked towards the man that she feared most in the whole world. At that moment she was sure she would rather face Voldemort than her own father, at least she wouldn’t have been so scared._

_“Dad,” she said, her voice was rough and almost unrecognizable even to her own ears._

_“Hmm?” muttered Ron, sipping from his cup of coffee, his eyes fixed on the newspaper in front of him._

_“I have to tell you something,” she replied firmly. Rose had made up her mind, it was now or never._

_“Yes, Rose,” his eyes did not move from the Prophet._

_“Dad!” she snapped exasperatedly._

_“Yes, Rose,” Ron replied, his eyes remaining on the Prophet._

_“Will you look at me?” she commanded, stomping her feet on the floor. “I need to talk to you!” She walked to the table, pulling on her father’s sleeve like she used to do when she was younger or wanted something._

_The movement caused Ron to spill some of his coffee on the table, raising his eyes upward towards his daughter. “Rose,” he said firmly, “you aren’t a baby anymore. Merlin, grow up!”_

_“Dad, look,” she motioned towards her belly, “I’m pregnant.”_

_Ron levelled his eyes on her stomach. “No, you’re not,” he replied calmly, turning his attention back to his Prophet._

_“Of course I am,” she snapped, “look at my belly.”_

_Ron gave her another look over, but his vague expression did not change. “No, you’re not, Rose Weasley.”_

_Rose lowered her eyes to her belly with a challenging glare, but when she looked down, her face fell. She found herself staring at her flat stomach, her hands ran down her abdomen but she no longer felt the bump._

_“Dad, I swear…” she muttered, “I’m pregnant…” Confusion washed over her face as she felt something thick and warm running down her legs. When she looked down she realized that the white nightgown she donned was soaked in blood from her waist to her knees. Rose’s breath hitched as her eyes widened, her fingers were slick with blood._

_“Maybe you were pregnant, and gave birth to the baby without noticing,” Ron’s eyes settled back onto the Daily Prophet as he sipped another mug of coffee._

_“I would have noticed, if I… I would have—what’s this?” She held her breath and stood still. Her ears strained trying to listen to the faint noise. “Dad, can you hear it?” her voice remained a whisper as she listened._

_“Hmm?” muttered Ron, ignoring her once again._

_Rose turned on her heel and walked through the door of her kitchen. Instead of finding herself in the living-room, she stepped in her bedroom. Her bed and walls were exactly like she remembered, except there was now a cradle next to her bed with a boy bending over it. The boy was singing a lullaby as gurgles and cries seeped from the cradle. Rose stopped in her tracks as her eyes filled with unreasonable fear._

_“Rose,” the boy’s voice was unmistakable; he raised his head as a smile played on his lips._

_“James,” she mouthed, but her voice failed to sound._

_“Come here, come here, come here,” he hurried her, gesturing for her to join him._

_Rose frowned slightly, but she walked towards him, her steps slow and uncertain._ _James’ arm circled around her waist as he pulled her forward, towering behind her awaiting the moment she would look down._

_“Looks who’s here,” his eyes fixed on the baby below, “Mum’s here.”_

_Rose’s breath quickened as she bent over the cradle peering into it. It was too dark to see anything. “James,” but her voice remained quiet._

_“Take it, Rose, come on,” he encouraged her, “take it in your arms.”_

_Rose’s eyebrows furrowed as she bent over the cradle, immersing her hands into the darkness of the little bed._

_“James,” her voice was finally audible, “James, it’s slimy and cold.” Her arms disappeared into the darkness up to her elbows as she seized something. When she tried to pull it out she found that she couldn’t move. “James,” she desperately tried to scream, but all she could muster was a whisper. “I can’t move, James.” She didn’t turn, but she could feel that James was no longer behind her._

_Rose bit into her bottom lip as she pulled with more force. As she attempted to remove the baby, something cold wrapped around her arms. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound escaped her lips. Her arms pulled the bundle out of the cradle, her mind registered that she was holding a small pink baby. Her jaw dropped in fear: the baby had an eye in the middle of his forehead; his head was monstrously big for his little body. The small hands that held onto her arms revealed three tiny fingers on each._

_Rose was frozen, she desperately wanted to drop the infant and run. But deep down she knew she couldn’t do such a thing. The baby stretched his hands toward her as his voice filled the room around her, “Mum,” his voice made her blood run cold. Her heart seemed to shatter into pieces as she looked down at the monstrosity in her arms._

_“Rose,” the firm voice behind startled her. “What are you doing in my bedroom?”_

_Rose tried to turn, but her feet felt cemented to the floor. Her knees were stiff and her body was lacking control._

_“Rose!” the voice called to her again._

_Rose raised her eyes, in front of her stood Uncle Harry. His face was cold and distant, a look she had never seen before shined in his emerald eyes as he watched her intently._

_“Uncle Harry,” she whispered, “the baby, I didn’t mean to—”_

_“The baby isn’t the problem,” replied Harry. Suddenly Rose found herself sitting on the huge double bed in Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny’s house. The baby in her hands was now gone, her stomach had ballooned out once more. Harry took a few steps towards her, kneeling next to her. “The problem is what you and James did,” his voice was harsher than she remembered._

_Rose’s eyes filled with tears; never in her whole life had she seen her Uncle so angry. “I-I didn’t mean to,” she replied, her voice trembled as tears streaked her cheeks._

_“It’s not important,” his words stung her like ice, “you’ve already done it. You cannot take that back. Besides, James has already paid for your actions.”_

_“What happened?” The question was automatic, but the fear and horror of understanding filled her heart. She knew, deep down, that her cousin was dead. “Uncle…”_

_“Your father killed him,” his reply was cold, void of any empathy._

_Rose brought her hands to her mouth, her eyes wide in horror. “Dad? No, he wouldn’t…”_

_“He did it, Rose.” Harry’s voice was ice cold. He stood, taking a step back as he revealed his wand. Pointing it towards her, his ice cold words filled the space around her, “You do understand that I have to avenge my son’s wrongful death, and that it is you that will have to pay.”_

_“No! Uncle Harry! Please, no,” she screamed as her arms instinctively covered her face, “please, Uncle Harry, no! I swear I didn’t want to…”_

“Rose!” the voice screamed, as hands gripped her shoulders attempting to wake her from her fitful sleep. “Rose, wake up!”

The red-haired girl opened her eyes as widely as she could, her hand grasping the closest thing to her – the slender hand that had been shaking her. Attempting to stand, she realized that her sweat soaked clothing clung to her body.

She took a sharp breath as she tried to understand what had happened. She looked into the green eyes of the girl in front of her, realization of her current surroundings flooded her thoughts. Her eyes travelled around the room; the five beds placed around a stove, the high windows that overlooked the Hogwarts grounds, and the crimson curtain around her bed all brought her back to reality. She was safe; it had all been a terrible dream.

She sunk her head into the pillow and breathed deeply. She desperately tried to control her furiously beating heart. _A dream, it was just a dream…_

She brought a hand to her forehead, she was wet with sweat. Her eyes finally settled back on the person that had saved her from the horrible nightmare.

“Lily,” she said hoarsely, her hands quickly reached out to the other girl’s lap. She searched for support in her cousin’s warm palms.

“That seemed like a very powerful nightmare,” the fourth year said, squeezing her cousin’s hand, “I’ve never heard anyone scream like that.”

Rose closed her eyes. “I was screaming?” she asked weakly. “What did I say?” The memory of her dream was foggy, she could only remember fragments. She could, however, remember it revolved around James — she hoped that she hadn’t screamed his name.

“It was confusing,” Lily replied, trying to remember. “You were screaming about a baby, and then you said that you didn’t want to do something.” Lily’s face contorted into deeper confusion as she continued, “And then you were screaming again about the baby.” Lily looked at her with a soft smile. “What did you have for lunch?” she asked amused.

Rose shook her head softly, signalling her cousin not to joke about that. She opened her eyes again, her gaze washing over Lily as if it was the first time she saw her. “What are you doing here?” Rose’s voice wavered as she shivered in the mild dorm air.

“Mary Finnigan,” she said, nodding towards one of the empty beds around them, “she said that you were here crying while we were at dinner. I came to see you.” Her expression was anxious as she added, “Is everything alright?”

Rose shut her eyes, but didn’t answer. She remained on the bed as small shivers wracked her body.

Lily squeezed her cousin’s hands in hers. “Rose,” her voice was vehement as she spoke. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Rose removed her hand from her cousin’s grasp before turning away. “I’m tired, I want to sleep.”

Lily stood from the bed and circled it. She stood right in front of Rose, her hands on her hips. “You slept all afternoon,” she replied, “what’s wrong with you?”

“I’m ill,” she protested weakly.

“Then you have to go to the Hospital Wing,” Lily quipped matter-of-factly.

“I don’t feel like moving,” Rose replied hastily.

“I’ll help you get there,” Lily responded, promptly offering her a hand.

“No, Lily!” Rose snapped as she smacked Lily’s hand away. Lily moved away, shocked by her cousin’s sudden outburst. “I don’t want to go, okay?” her features had darkened but her voice softened.

Lily raised her chin as she crossed her arms. “Okay,” her voice iced over, “sorry if I worried about you.” She turned on her heel towards the door of the sixth year girls’ dorm, quickly walking out.

The heavy dormitory door thudded shut behind her, her eyes rolling as her closed fists stuffed themselves into her pockets. She resolved to collect her books from the common room before retiring to bed after such a stressful day.

The common room was stuffed with people, mostly fifth and seventh years, who were already studying for their June exams. Lily slipped through the crowded common room to a small table tucked away near the fireplace. She had planned to study after dinner, but instead the neglected books had lain unused.

As his cousin appeared next to him, Hugo raised his eyes from the book that was settled in his lap asking, “How’s Rose?”

Lily shrugged slightly, her hands moving quickly on the table as she collected her things. “She says she’s ill,” she informed him coldly.

“Ill?” Hugo’s eyes widened as he repeated Lily’s word. “What does she have?”

“I don’t know,” Lily quipped.

“You didn’t ask her?” Hugo closed the book in his lap, his attention fully focused on Lily.

“She wouldn’t say,” she replied curtly.

“And you didn’t insist?”

Lily snorted. “Why don’t you go and ask her?” she snapped, glaring at him.

“Because I can’t get into the girls’ dorm,” he snapped back.

Lily opened her mouth, venomous words ready to fire on her tongue, but their attention was dragged to the portrait hole that had swung open to reveal a dirty and soaked James. Lily frowned as she looked over her brother. With a closer look Lily realized that his clothing was soaked through, buttons were missing from his chest, and his hair was messier than usual.

The common room fell silent as Hugo stood, his eyes taking in the sight before him. The dirt covered boy stepped into the room, barking orders for the younger students to keep walking.

Hugo and Lily exchanged looks before they ran towards the door that led to the boys’ dorm. They stood in front of James as he reached the stairs. The boy looked down at them and frowned. “Move away, midgets,” he said coldly.

“Where have you been?” Lily ignored his comment, glancing at his dirty face, and the wet hair that was falling into his eyes.

“None of your business,” he replied stiffly, trying to push her away.

“You weren’t at dinner,” pointed out Hugo, his eyes looking intently at his cousin’s face.

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t hungry,” he snapped, trying to push through them. “Move away, I said,” he half-cried.

“Don’t you feel well?” Hugo asked as if he were a doctor with a patient.

Lily stretched a hand towards him, laying her small palm against his cold forehead. “He’s frozen,” she spoke to Hugo while James moved away from her, “she was quite hot.”

James snorted. “I’m fine,” he snapped before turning towards his sister. “What? Who isn’t feeling well?”

“Rose,” she answered quietly.

James felt a sudden headache behind his eyes. “What?” he groaned. “What does she have?”

“We don’t know,” said Hugo quickly. “She didn’t ask,” he added, nodding towards his cousin and earning a glare from her.

“I already told you, she wouldn’t say!” she snapped.

“And where is she?” asked James.

Lily eyed him suspiciously. “Why are you so interested in her?” her eyes hardened as she questioned her brother like a detective would examine a suspect. “You have something you need to get off your conscience?”

James backed away, staggering. “What are you talking about?” his voice trembled as he spoke.

“Was she cast under a spell or something?” Hugo asked him. “You offered her one of Uncle George’s sweets, didn’t you?”

Lily’s eyes flickered to Hugo, “Your sister is not stupid enough to accept one of those sweets. As for the spell though…”

“I didn’t do anything to her,” James broke in, his voice harsher than he had intended. “Now, move away!”

“No, first you have to tell us—hey!” Lily protested as her brother gripped her waist, removing her from the steps that led to the dormitory. He gently placed her down before he glared at Hugo, who moved quickly away to let him pass.

“And stop bothering me with your childish antics,” he snapped at the two before disappearing up the stairs.


	3. Fall and Shatter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the huge delay you had to endure! I had to change beta-reader for this new chapter because my other one kind of disappeared. My new one - all hail [Fyrshi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyrshi/profile/) and please check out her stories because she writes beautifully - is marvellous, and I have a feeling that updates will come much more frequently now. She might go through the first two chapters as well, just for the sake of continuity (plot won't be changed, do not worry there, just grammar and wording). But please, do enjoy this chapter and wait for my next one where Scorpius will finally play a big part! Thank you for being so patient with me!

***

_James climbed up the stairs to the Astronomy Tower and admired the clear view it gave him of Hogwarts when he reached the top of its rocky construct. It was the highest tower of the whole castle and, on a cloudless night like this, the visible array of stars right above his head created a magic game of shadow and light over the school’s sprawling grounds. He had spent a few nights here with his class, staring up at the stars and taking notes on the boring movements of the planets, but he had spent much more time here, with Rose, during the warm summer evenings. James wrapped himself in his coat and shivered for the cold as his soft slippers sunk into the mushy whiteness of the snow, and he kept his head low as he advanced, for his face was being slapped by a merciless wind that roared at him from every direction._

_For a moment, the Gryffindor boy stopped, and his mind was filled with the thought of the former Headmaster’s ghost. Everybody knew that he had died in that place, and it was an amusing tradition for some students to let the first years think that his soul still patrolled its confines, ready to devour any foolish students that dared to step foot there after their curfews. He shook his head and chased that thought away, because he had laid there many times with Rose, yet nothing had ever happened to them. As far as he was concerned, the ghost was just a story, nothing more._

_He took another step and lowered his eyes to the snow-covered floor, before he noticed that there were some little footprints before him. They had been made by a pair of slim and naked feet, which were most probably owned by a girl who was thin and not too tall, because the steps didn’t sink too deeply in the snow. However, that was not the only thing he saw; there were circular stains the same colour of the curtains that had hung around his bed for the last seven years scattered amongst the footprints, and they stood out vividly in the glimmering white of the snow. He bent over them and stood still to examine them further, while a metallic and sour smell assaulted his nostrils._

_He raised his head in utter disgust as he understood that the stains, which looked like delicate red flowers on the snow’s pale surface, were actually blood spots and that, to his added revulsion, they became more frequent as he continued to walk. He staggered slightly as he took great care to avoid stepping onto the blood and, when a sweet melody floated into his ears, he suddenly raised his head and stared at the image before him. On the edge of the tower, with her feet perched lightly on a rampart, was a rather familiar-looking girl. The long lengths of her curly, red hair swayed in the wind at the same rhythm of her nightgown, and her bare feet sunk deep into the snow, in contrast to the lightness of her steps. However, what was disturbing about the image was that, right underneath her, a puddle of blood was taking shape and tainting the pure white of the snow with its murky crimson. She was softly humming the tune of a melody that James was sure he had heard somewhere else but couldn’t seem to remember._

_“Rose,” he murmured, staring at the ethereal figure standing in the middle of the tower._

_The tune stopped and, though the girl turned her head a little, she stayed absolutely still, as if she was listening to the gentle breath of the night, while her profile glowed eerily underneath the stars’ bright lights._

_“Rose,” James repeated while he stretched out a hand before him._

_The girl finally turned around completely, and James felt the urge to throw up at the sight of her. She was white like the snow where she was standing on, but her red hair was a mane of blood-matted curls, and her piercing blue eyes looked intently at him out of the curiously distant expression that was plastered over her face. Her nightgown fluttered freely around her breasts and legs but it, along with the blood that soaked its delicate fabric, clung stubbornly to her stomach. James took a step back and brought a hand to his mouth as he tried hard to fight the desire to be sick in front of her._

_“James,” she murmured, and a sad smile drifted onto her face as she called out his name._

_James opened his mouth, but no sound exited its choked depths. He stepped back and fell on the snow, while his slippers flew away in a graceless arc and fell into the scarlet puddle. “Rose,” he managed to gasp out, though he sounded rather short of breath, “what did you do?”_

_“I simply did what you asked me to do,” she replied dreamily._

_“W-What?” he mouthed, as his face quickly twisted into a horrified mask._

_“I got rid of it,” she murmured as she brought a hand to her belly and rubbed it absent-mindedly, before she watched as some more blood flooded over her small fingers and cascaded onto the snow. “Like you asked me to.” A knife slipped from her other hand and thudded on the floor as its tainted blade embedded itself into the snow a few inches from her feet. She ignored it and climbed down from the battlement where she stood before she unsteadily walked towards him._

_“Rose,” he heard himself say, with his voice shaking from sobs and sniffles, “I-I’m sorry.”_

_“Why, James?” she asked in her sweetly innocent voice. “I only did what you asked me to do.”_

_“I’m sorry,” he repeated brokenly. He felt hot, salty tears stream down his cheeks as he apologized, and brought a hand up to brush them away. He hadn’t been crying since his sixth birthday, when Albus deliberately made his cake fall on the floor, so how could he cry now, of all times? He wasn’t even sure that he knew how to show emotions like this anymore, but tears were steadily streaming down his cheeks as if they didn’t need him to control them. His vision blurred a little even as he tried to stop the salty rivulets of sorrow from flowing, and he wiped them away more forcefully, as if he could stop them with violence alone._

_She stopped and sighed softly in response to his choked apologies. “I’m not,” she replied in an all too carefree tone, “after all, now we can still be together without worrying about a baby, right?”_

_“Oh, Rose…”_

_She parted her lips and the sweet melody flowed out from her again, and suddenly, as the tune swirled merrily in the air, James remembered its origins. It was a lullaby that their Grandmother Molly used to sing to them when they stayed at the Burrow during the long, hot summer days, and it was sweet, and heavy with recollections of happy moments in their blithe lives._

_Without any notice, James whipped his head towards the ground and violently threw up in the snow. The acidic tang of vomit burned his throat and mouth and it stained the snow a putrid beige next to his hands. He coughed and spluttered more bile onto the snow when he accidentally let his gaze wander over the acrid mess, and then grabbed some untouched snow to clean his burning mouth, even as he continued to heave out the half-digested contents of his stomach._

_He pushed his palms onto the cold floor and staggered to his feet, while his hands instinctively searched for the time-worn battlements to grip onto and help himself up from his doubled-over position. Once he was up again, he glanced towards his cousin and dropped his hands to his knees, as if he had to take some deeps breaths after a run, before he drew in hoarse and unsteady gasps of air. “Rose,” he panted, delirious with pain and disgust._

_“Yes, James?” she distantly responded as the lullaby hovered unheard over her lips._

_James took a staggering step and shakily began walking towards her. “I’m sorry, Rose,” he whimpered, his voice broken with pain. He stretched his arms forward and stared pityingly at her form like he would have done with a wounded animal, as if he was trying to entice her to stumble into his outspread arms._

_Rose shook her head slightly as fear blossomed in her eyes, and as he haltingly advanced she took a step back, only to trip over the stairs her vision had neglected to inform her of. Her terrified gaze caught James’ incredulous one for a moment before she fell backwards, and a drawn-out scream was ripped from her slim body as it flew over the low-lying parapets._

_Although James was frozen in the scant seconds following his cousin’s fall from the tower, he quickly recovered and ran towards the battlement but, though he leaned out as far as he could, his fingers only brushed hers without being able to get a solid hold of her outstretched hand. He couldn’t look away while she fell, as her scared face contorted from her efforts to mouth his name one final time and her hair whipped around her desperately outstretched arms as if it moved in slow motion, while she became smaller with every passing second. He screamed her name, even as she fought to shout his own, and frantically stretched his arms out towards her as he struggled to find some sort of purchase on the slippery floor beneath his bare feet, but before he could even understand what he was doing, he was flying down from the Astronomy Tower at the same breakneck speed that she was falling at. The stars gazed passively at their descending forms as they fell down, down, down…_

James let out a cry as he hit the floor, and as his knees and wrists crashed painfully against the tiled expanse of the dormitory, a twinge of excruciating pain exploded in his head. He felt, rather than saw, the lights flicker in the room he shared with his fellow schoolmates, as well as the people that whispered uneasily around him. Someone kneeled next to his fallen form and a palm pressed gently against his cheek, before it descended in a rhythmic procession of soft slaps to try and reanimate his unmoving body.

“James,” someone called to him from above, “hey, James, you alright, mate?”

The boy moaned and pushed the hand that was slapping him away, before he pressed his clammy palms against the floor and pushed himself up into a more comfortable position. “Blimey,” he muttered under his breath, while more pain lanced through his thoroughly abused body.

“What’s the matter?” a boy drowsily asked from a bed beside him. “Is he alright?”

“I wish I was alright, you idiot,” he moaned, as he finally managed to sit up and massage his head and wrists without feeling more unbearable pain, “I just fell from the Astronomy Tower.”

The boy who was kneeling next to him softly laughed at James’ declaration. “Well, he’s almost alright,” he chuckled, before he turned to the groaning boy and added, “James, mate, you fell from your bed, not the tower.”

James blinked and looked around himself as his eyes took in all his fellow seventh-year Gryffindors with their worried and amused countenances. “I was falling off the tower, though…” he mumbled, as he tried to remember what he’d experienced.

The boy next to him shook his head, and some of his sandy hair fell before his eyes from the vigorousness of his movements. “You were dreaming,” he informed him, “and screaming, too.”

James closed his eyes for a moment and the nightmare flashed across his darkened eyelids. The tower, the snow, Rose, the blood, his vomit… at the last broken image, James felt the acrid taste of his vomit crawling up the bottom of his throat and a new wave of sickness invaded his exhausted being. He lunged upwards and grabbed the sheets on his bed as he brought a hand to his mouth, while he gestured furiously for someone to support him to the toilet.

The boy next to him wrapped his strong arm under James’ shoulder and pulled his friend onto his feet, before he helped him reach the toilet bowl. As the duo hobbled away from the dorm, the other boys looked hopefully at their retreating forms as they carefully watched for any signs of spilt bile on the floor.

James threw himself over the toilet bowl and puked into the clear liquid, while all the other boys expressed perverse joy in the face of his violent sickness. His friend patted his back gently and gripped James’ shoulder tightly until the burping sounds were brought to an end, before he eased the suffering boy back on his heels. The boy knelt next to him another time and offered him a paper towel, which James took to wipe his mouth dry.

“You alright?” the boy gently murmured, while he rubbed soothing circles into the other’s back.

James looked at him with wide eyes, while cold sweat seeped down his aching temples. “I guess so,” he replied quietly, before he shakily asked the heavy thought weighing on his mind. “You said I was… screaming, Martin?”

Martin nodded quickly in response. “You woke us all up with the racket,” he added with slight amusement.

“Blimey,” he muttered, “was I saying anything while I was screaming?”

“I didn’t catch anything, but maybe one of the boys—”

“Yes, ask them,” he urged him.

Martin cast him a strange glance at the earnest insistence in his tone, but stood up and walked back to his fellow schoolmates regardless. James heard them muttering in the dormitory for a few minutes, while people were shaking their heads and shrugging their shoulders in response to his friend’s soft questions.

“No,” Martin eventually replied as he re-entered the bathroom, while James scrambled to his feet and dunked his head under the water that pooled in the basin. “Apparently, you weren’t screaming anything understandable.”

James closed his eyes and swallowed some of the fresh water surrounding his head, and when he raised his head, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror… and stared in horror at the image before him. His skin was pasty white, like a ghost’s, in sharp contrast to the bloodshot sclera of his cloudy brown eyes, and though cold sweat ran down the soaked strands of his dark hair and onto his cheeks, he felt like they were on fire instead. “I think I’m not feeling too well,” he weakly whimpered, and desperately clutched at the sink’s sturdy edges.

“Well, it’s not surprising,” Martin dryly commented, with his arms crossed firmly over his chest, “after all, you’ve been out all afternoon, wandering around Merlin knows where. Seriously, James, what’s gotten into you? Are you planning to get sick before the next match against Slytherin or something?”

James tightened his grip on the sink with a sudden harsh force, and wearily closed his eyes. “It’s just a flu, Merlin’s beard. Martin, just give it a rest and help me to the Hospital Wing, will you?” He stretched out a trembling hand towards his friend, who took it with a sturdy grasp. “I’ll be out of there tomorrow morning like new again.”

“You better be,” Martin jokingly warned with a chuckle, “the next match is this Saturday, and we’d like to win our game, at the very least.”

“I told you—”

“I know, I know,” he cut him off quickly, and good-naturedly mimicked the other’s usual assurances, “you’re the captain of our Quidditch team and the eldest son of Harry Potter, so of course I’d believe your promises.”

James growled something that sounded like ‘you better believe me’ as he let his friend guide him towards the Hospital Wing.

“Martin,” James murmured, once they had descended the tricky stairs that brought them downstairs and had entered into the common room, as his eyes darted to the stairs leading up to the girls’ dorm. “Can I ask you something?”

“Whoa, man,” he answered, as he moved off to one side, “I’m taken, you know…”

James snorted and rolled his eyes. “I’m serious,” he muttered unamusedly.

“Well, I am too,” Martin replied as he nudged him with a poorly-suppressed chuckle, and added, “So what did you want to ask, mate?”

James looked around furtively for a few moments, and when he finally spoke, his voice was so low that Martin had to stop breathing and lean a little closer to hear him at all. “Can you not let anybody know about what just happened back there?” he asked in a whisper, as his cheeks flared up even more.

Martin raised his eyebrows curiously at his ever-strange requests. “Well, I haven’t planned to put up a notice in the common room about you being sick in the bathroom, but maybe your siblings and cousins would want to know that you’re not exactly feeling well,” he pondered thoughtfully.

“I  _am_ well,” he replied sharply, “I just need Madam Pomfrey to give me one of her damn healing potions. There’s absolutely no need to tell anyone about my health, because it’ll be fine in no time at all!” He tightened his weak hand around his friend’s arm and smirked slightly, before he flippantly added, “Although I’ll tell them that you took advantage of me, since I was too weak to fight back when you made your amorous advances.”

Martin looked at him in mild disgust and shook his head wearily. “You’re definitely sick, man, and not just in terms of your body,” he grumpily informed his friend.

James closed his eyes but, apart from the flutter of his eyelids, he refused to acknowledge his friend’s statement. He definitely agreed with him, though, but there was simply no need for the boy to know, let alone other people. “…And especially not my cousin,” he murmured, but it was so quiet that Martin didn’t pick up on it. He simply thought that it was just another moan of pain that escaped his friend’s cracked lips as they shuffled along the dark corridors and slowly made their way towards the Hospital Wing.


	4. Broken Trust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A scene from this chapter has been inspired by a scene in "The Dangerous Lives of the Altar Boys". Apparently, nobody apart from me has ever seen that film, so... Oh well! Enjoy the chapter!

*** 

“Class dismissed,” Slughorn declared calmly, as he walked slowly towards his desk and sat down behind it. The professor looked placidly at the students while they placed their little phials in front of him. “Not bad, Malfoy. Not too terrible, Potter. Not exactly the colour indicated on the book, eh, Wood? Not bad, Davies. Having a bad day, Miss Weasley?” Slughorn laughed softly when his eyes alighted on the latest student’s miniature flagon, while his wide stomach jiggled around like pudding in his amusement.

Some of the remaining students glanced up at Rose from their desks as she glowered darkly at the amused professor and the terribly unkind comment he had just given to her. It was true that her potion was steaming away with the most indescribably putrid odours known to mankind and that it was a bright orange instead of a soft pink, but it was the first time in six years that she had concocted a potion that had turned out so wrong. It wasn’t necessary to make a fuss about it, let alone be enough of a reason for the condescendingly mocking query he saw fit to bestow upon her.

“I guess I put the eyes of newt too early,” she replied quietly, while her resentful indignity fought to break out of the thick lump in her throat.

“And the frog’s tongue was added too late,” Professor Slughorn added loftily, as he put her phial next to the others and kept on vocalising his annoying comments. “Nice try, Smith. Maybe Potions is not your subject, Green. Not too bad, Stoney.”

Rose walked back to her desk and threw her bag over it, even as she commenced stuffing all her belongings inside with uncharacteristically quick movements that betrayed her smouldering anger. While she hastily shoved her Potions book into the cluttered mess of her bag, she continued to mutter curses under her breath, as well as other things that Professor Slughorn didn’t need to hear at all.

She vanished the remains of her potion and pulled the cauldron into her sack, but managed to knock over a set of phials that crashed piercingly onto the floor. Some heads turned to look at her and the shattered mess she had made, but she glared at all of them before they could approach her and ask if she was all right. All of them readily complied with her unspoken demand, except for one particularly bold individual.

“You alright?” asked Scorpius, as he walked towards her while radiating thick waves of concern.

“Yes,” she replied curtly, whilst she knelt to pick up the pieces of glass and the phials. Her eyes deliberately avoided the palpable worry on his face as they looked everywhere but at him, though this did nothing to deter the anxious boy.

“Are you sure?” he asked again, even as he looked down at her crouching form with his eyebrows seated high on his creased forehead.

She let out a soft cry, half pain and half surprise, and stood up immediately after his words had died on his lips. The jagged shards of glass fell back unheeded onto the floor as she brought her index finger to her lips and sucked its small yet deep wound.

“Did you cut yourself?” he inquired lamely as he tried to peer over her head, with his voice carrying a little bit too much worry for the tiny cut it referred to.

“I’m fine,” she mumbled in reply, her words slurred from the fingertip she continued to suck on.

“Here, let me help you,” he murmured softly, as he gently enveloped her hand in his slightly warmer one and pulled out his wand from a nearby pocket.

Rose’s hand slid away from his before he could properly restrain her, and she directed yet another baleful glare at his concerned eyes. “I can heal myself just fine,” she retorted curtly, even as her gaze darted away from his once more. She rocked back onto the balls of her feet and stretched out her hand towards the sharp slivers of glass, but before she could even hope to touch them, they all flew gracefully above her head and silently alighted onto the table, before they began sticking themselves together to take on the shape of the phials she had broken mere seconds ago.

She scowled darkly at the floor as if it had done something terrible to her but, with a great deal of effort and a rather harsh clenching of her hands into fists, she abruptly stood up and moved to put the phials away, while burning with the knowledge that Scorpius was looking intently at her tense back. “I could have done that myself,” she hissed, as her eyes swivelled to stare at her bag.

“I’m sure you could,” he replied softly – almost a little too softly, in fact. “The problem is… why didn’t you?” He rested the small of his back against her desk and crossed his arms, all the while eyeing her suspiciously.

She rolled her eyes at his deceptively quiet tone and endeavoured to convince the other to go away. “I’m not in the mood, Scorpius,” she snapped angrily, “so just leave me alone already.”

“I will, as soon as you tell me what’s troubling you,” he replied simply, as his eyes bored holes into her skull.

She snorted and tossed her hair contemptuously at his response. “I’m fine,” she spat at the table before her, “perfectly fine.” She tossed the bag onto her shoulder and glanced briefly at him, before she tore her gaze away and looked at the slightly ajar door. “Now, if you will excuse me…”

Scorpius’ arm darted towards her and she bumped into it, with her belly colliding almost painfully against the hard muscles coiled tightly in the sinewy limb. She glared at him and boldly met his equally hard eyes. “Scorpius,” she snapped, even as she automatically brought a hand to her stomach and began caressing it protectively, “that hurt.”

“Rubbish,” he muttered sullenly. “Listen, it’s as clear as day that there’s something wrong with you, so just tell me what is it and we can get over it.”

She snorted derisively at his stubbornness and failed to move past him again. “I can get over it by myself.”

“A-hah!” He pointed an accusing finger at her and loudly exclaimed his triumph. “So you’re finally admitting that there’s something wrong!”

She rolled her eyes for the millionth time at him, but her cheeks were suddenly a little more flushed than they were before. “There’s nothing wrong,” she hissed, “it’s just not a good time.”

“Come on, Rose…”

“Scorpius, seriously, you and Albus need to learn how to mind your own business every once in a while and just leave people alone,” she snapped huffily.

“Why? What did you do to Albus?” he questioned curiously as his grey eyes widened a little at her fury-laced words.

“I just got a bit mad at him because I didn’t feel well yesterday,” she blurted out.

“I didn’t know,” he muttered quickly, and worriedly repeated his initial question, “are you alright?”

“I’m fine. Seriously, give it a rest already…” she mumbled unhappily, while looking into his eyes.

Scorpius held her unwavering gaze for a long moment, and she bravely held her ground against his probing stare. With a sudden jerk of his head, he finally looked away and lowered his gaze to the ground. “Okay, fine,” he grumbled, grudging in his defeat, “but there’s definitely something that’s bothering you, and I can tell that’s it something big.”

She let out a quiet laugh, laced with soft incredulity. “Oh, really now?” she quipped waspishly. “And how would you be able to tell all of a sudden?”

“My father has been teaching me Legilimency,” he informed her.

She nearly let another laugh escape her sceptical lips, but stopped herself when she saw the deadly seriousness of his statement in his unyielding stare. “Really?” she gritted past her teeth, as her mocking merriment morphed into an almost revolted state.

Scorpius’ lips curled a little as his mind lingered on his disdainful memories. “He tried a few times, but I’m not exactly… gifted… like he was, as he quite clearly said,” he confessed mirthlessly, while Rose let out a deep breath of relief to the point where her mouth parted slightly, as she thought of the consequences that would’ve come with Scorpius’ skills had he been proficient in Legilimency. “What are you hiding, Rose?” he iterated quietly, while lowering his voice to a near-inaudible level.

Rose looked away from him and was rather shocked to see that they were now the last two students left in the classroom. “I’m not hiding anything, Scorpius,” she muttered, as she attempted to walk past him once more.

“…And why don’t I seem to believe you yet?” he shook his head as he muttered, half to himself and half to her, as he walked past her and spread his arms wide to bar her exit from the otherwise-empty classroom.

“I have classes,” she snarled icily, as she came to a stop in front of him.

“Not before this afternoon you don’t,” he pointed out smugly.

“Well, I need to go to the library,” she almost shouted, as rage began to cloud her vision. “Go away, Scorpius.” She roughly shoved her hands against his chest, but he refused to move or obey her repetitive yet ineffective command.

“Tell me what’s wrong and I’ll go away,” he repeated again, while smirking at her helpless ire.

Rose’s hands gripped Scorpius’ shirt tightly, before she let him go and lowered her eyes to her shuffling feet. “I can’t tell you,” she murmured brokenly, as her angry tone was slightly marred by her soft and unexpected sobs. “Please, just leave me alone already.”

“I’m not going to leave you alone if you’re—”

“Just let me go, Scorpius!” she lashed out at his stubborn refusal, as she raised her shining eyes to his and her cheeks glimmered faintly with her tears. “Let me go and leave me alone if you want me to be fine!” She threw herself at him and gripped his shirt with trembling hands as her desperate plea rung harshly in the relative silence of the classroom.

Scorpius blinked in stunned surprise at both Rose’s words and actions. He gripped her wrists and stopped her hands from trembling while she melt into sobs against the hard contours of his body, and when her knees failed her to the point where she slowly slid onto the floor, Scorpius held on all the tighter and slid down beside her. She leaned her head against his chest and started to sob and sniffle louder against him, and he simply radiated comfort and warmth to her broken figure.

Scorpius’ hands went to her head as he started to caress the red curls of her thick hair. “Hey, everything’s going to be fine,” he soothed gently, while his fingers continued to stroke her head, “I’m here for you.”

“Scorpius,” she sobbed, her voice still thick with sorrow.

“Rose, I’m here,” he whispered to her again, all the while hugging her shivering body and caressing her hair.

She sniffled again and, though Scorpius felt like recoiling from his damp shirt soaked with her tears, he honestly didn’t care to succumb to his baser urges. She was his friend and she was in need, so he would have stayed crouched beside her and tried to calm her for the rest of eternity, if that was what it took to make her feel any better. Suddenly, in the middle of his worry and concern, she pushed away from him and her milky hands wiped away the unshed tears she still had in her eyes, as well as the shed ones scattered all over her face, before she looked up at him.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, as her shame seeped through her voice, “I didn’t mean to…”

“Just tell me what’s bothering you,” he cajoled tenderly in reply, “I can help you.”

She shook her head softly, while her eyes lowered their gaze downwards again. “No, you can’t.”

“You’d never know if you don’t try, Rose,” he coaxed, and smiled softly for extra measure.

Rose bit her bottom lip and reconsidered her options at Scorpius’ gentle pleas. She really wanted to talk to someone and she needed to get her dark secret off her chest, because she knew that she wouldn’t last for very long before she caved into the urge to scream it out loud. It was only a matter of time before everyone would learn that she was pregnant with her cousin’s child, and if she was going to trust anyone with her secret…

“D-Do you remember when I told you that I was in love with someone?” she murmured softly, as she finally caved into her friend’s insistent prodding.

Scorpius tried to swallow down the thick lump in his throat, but his mouth had suddenly felt rather dry and the blockage in his throat could not be cleared. He jerkily nodded once, his voice failing him before he could even summon up the correct words to say. He still remembered that day at the Lake perfectly well, after he'd failed to kiss her and had his heart broken when she confessed her love for somebody else.

“I think I’ve just broken up with that person,” she sobbed dejectedly, as her liquid sorrow flowed freely once more.

Scorpius took a deep breath to keep himself from complimenting her, but barely managed to keep his facial expression as it was. “Really?” he asked, in a tone that was far happier than he had intended, but his jubilant mind quickly latched onto something that she’d said mere moments earlier. “What do you mean, ‘you think’?” he muttered thoughtfully after a while.

She sniffled again and shook her head weakly. “No, I’m sure that he’s left me,” she reassured him, though the obvious quaver in her tone betrayed her somewhat.

“Well, that’s terrific,” he exclaimed, and realised his mistake when Rose glared furiously at him. “That’s terrible, I meant,” he corrected himself quickly, while he fought to keep the smile off his face. “Why did you break up with him, though?”

She shook her head again, but with much more force than her last attempt at the action. “That’s none of your business,” she murmured, but the bitterness rankling at her soul slipped out into her soft tones.

Scorpius bit his bottom lip and decided to drop the subject… for now. “Sure,” he replied quietly, before he curiously added, “Can I, at least, know who this boy is?”

Rose sighed and pressed her face against Scorpius’ chest in an attempt to keep her flustered expression safe from his probing eyes. “James,” she let out, but it was so quiet that Scorpius had to lean closer to her squashed lips to hear her.

“James… do you mean James Catesby?” he snorted incredulously, as his mind flew disgustedly to a short fifth year he barely knew from Hufflepuff.

She shook her head against him and pressed her face even further into her chest, despite the discomfort that the pressure put on her nose. “J-James Potter,” she corrected hesitantly, even as her heart sank in her chest at the reluctant confession.

Scorpius’ hands tightened on her shoulders as the words stabbed deep into his body. “Rose,” he hissed pointedly, as his eyes widened with horror. “He’s your cousin,” he breathed out, and even the short phrase he’d limited himself to was enough to convey his overwhelming disapproval.

Rose felt the pale skin of her cheeks erupt into flames, as if she had finally understood the terrible ramifications of her impulsive idea to tell Scorpius about her forbidden relationship with James. “I’m well aware of that,” she snapped sharply in response.

“Then what in Merlin’s name were you thinking?” he yelped incredulously, even as his hands suddenly pushed her away from the comforting confines of his chest so that he could look her into her eyes and convey the magnitude of his astonishment.

She immediately darkened at his unsupportive response. “I thought you, of all people, would have understood,” she huffed icily, as she shakily brushed his hands off her and stood back up.

“I’m trying to, Rose,” he pleaded, as he scrambled to stand up as well and looked piteously at her form as she roughly slung the bag back onto her shoulder once more. “Did he force you to do this?”

She looked at him and her face abruptly screwed up with her explosive anger. “No, of course not!” she snapped, while regret battered at her mind, “how could you even think of something like that?”

Scorpius’s face blackened at her accusations. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, while sounding anything but contrite as he tried to gain his composure once more. “But why did he leave you? Did he finally come back to his senses?”

Rose’s jaw fell at the blunt allegation and her eyes immediately clouded over with emotions far darker than rage. “How dare you?” she yelled into his face. “How dare you say something like that to me?”

Scorpius smirked and, suddenly, he looked very much like his father. “Oh my, am I upsetting you?”

She glared daggers at his smug countenance, flushed with anger and panting from her outbursts. “You can joke however much you want,” she hissed malevolently, “but I swear, if you tell anybody what I told you, I will—”

“Nobody in their right mind would believe me,” he snorted back, and venomously added for good measure, “it’s something far too disgusting to be anything more than a ‘joke’ anyway.”

She stepped back and crashed against a desk in her impotent ire, while bringing a hand to her mouth in abject repulsion. “You are horrible, Malfoy,” she blurted out, too furious to care for the raw pain that flashed momentarily across the boy’s grey eyes.

Scorpius glared at her because she knew that, more than everything else she could’ve said, the fact that she’d called him ‘Malfoy’ would always hurt him deeply. “No, Weasley,” he shot back with a feral hiss, “ _you_  are horrible.” With that final hurtful comment, he turned and glided coldly away from her, while the door to the classroom crashed loudly behind his stiff back.

As soon as his steps faded away in the corridor, Rose’s tears started to flow in earnest and, as she collapsed onto a chair she somehow managed to find, she brought her hands to her belly and pressed over its invisible bump with an obvious tremor in her hand. “Why me?” she asked herself miserably, before she hid her face in her hands and cried until her eyes eventually ran dry.

Her gaze shifted to the Potions cupboard and a million recipes for lethal draughts flashed through her mind, and she dwelled on her morbid musings for a long while before she shook her head. It was with a great deal of reluctance that she chased the thoughts away and got up from the seat, though she couldn’t help directing one last glance to the locked cupboard as she closed the door behind her. As much as she wanted to believe that everything was going to be all right, as Scorpius had tried to reassure her earlier… she could not fully trust his words – or anyone else’s, for that matter – anymore.

***

Quidditch was exactly what a certain seventh-year Gryffindor needed to get rid of all his anxiety, fear and obsession. A little bit of movement in the fresh air of a stunning November afternoon, coupled with the four houses that cheered for them and the brutal punches that were directed at the balls that naturally came as part of the game’s hazards, was enough to do wonders to anyone.

James walked amongst his teammates to give his usual stirring speech before the commencement of a match, and cleared his throat noisily to get everyone’s attention. “Okay,” he started out in a robust tone, more determined than ever before, “listen up, everyone. I know that this is just our second match for this year and that we have already won the first one quite comfortably, but—” He bored holes into all their souls as his expression abruptly darkened. “—I don’t give a damn about the last match.” He finished, and added in a chilling tone, “If you played at one hundred percent of your capabilities in the past match, then you’re going to have to play at one hundred and twenty percent for today’s match. I don’t want you to beat Slytherin today… I want you to smash them.” He glanced at his brother with narrowed eyes before he ended off with one last comment, “I don’t care if you have friends or siblings amongst them; if I see you acting nicely towards any of them at any time during the game, then I swear that I will throw you out of my team before you can even say ‘Snitch’.”

Albus glanced at his teammates and saw his worried expressions reflected equally on their own, before he snapped his gaze back to his overbearing brother. “James, I think that you’re being just a bit too enthusiastic here,” he muttered in resigned exasperation, “chill out already; I mean, c’mon, it’s just another Quidditch game.”

James stomped towards Albus and stood before him, while his eyes burnt dangerously with unsuppressed rage as he glared down at his little brother. “Chill out?” he hissed venomously. “Don’t talk to me about chilling out when you’ve gone and skipped the last training, Albus. I’m not chilling out anytime soon, and the only way I will is if you knock that Malfoy boy off his broom.” He narrowed his eyes and breathed out once more, before he delivered his final statement. “And I don’t care if he’s your boyfriend because you’re going to do exactly as I said.”

Albus widened his eyes at him in abject horror and disgust. “You’re not so funny, you know,” he huffed, while he walked past him and deliberately smashed his shoulder against James’ rigid one.

His elder brother turned and violently pushed at his chest in reaction to his actions. “ _You_  are not funny,” he gritted through his teeth as he sent him hurtling onto the floor.

Albus stood up, boiling with rage, and glared daggers into James’ skull. He flung his mouth open to reply with something that his grandmother would most probably have eternally locked him in his bedroom for if she had heard even an inkling of what he had to say, when the door that adjoined the Quidditch pitch opened and the cheers of the crowd reverberated loudly in their ears.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your bantering,” Wood announced in a less than sorry tone, as he placed a heavy hand on Albus’ shoulder and looked wearily at James, “but they’re waiting for us outside.”

Albus shook him off and yanked his broomstick from its position against the wall, and though he glared at James as he strode past him, nobody in the room dared to speak up. They positioned themselves at the entrance and mounted their broomsticks, with James on the front and Albus at his side, and prepared their grand entrance onto the pitch. The captain and the Seeker were side by side, just like their father had been with his own Quidditch captain many years before and, if an unknowing bystander had observed the tightly-packed group just then, they would’ve been sure to comment on the supposed unity of the team.

They pushed themselves off the ground with their feet and, in no time at all, the sustained roars of the crowd flowed over them as they began zooming around the pitch with spectacular dives and hair-raising ascents. The Slytherin team flew out from a door opposite to theirs and soared between them, and the laughing and screaming and grimacing erupted between the age-old opponents.

Scorpius flew close to Albus, who waved his hand slightly, and raised a brow at the way the other was controlling himself around him. “James told me to knock you off your broom,” he hissed in explanation, while his eyes frantically darted around to spot his elder brother, “he’s gone mad, I swear.”

Scorpius’ eyes widened at the startling comment. “He did what?” he asked in a furious whisper, as he joined in the hunt to find him. “Bastard.”

Albus looked at his friend and barely held back a grimace at his own thoughts concerning the matter. “But I won’t do it,” he declared unnecessarily, “so don’t worry about it.”

Scorpius looked at him and snorted in derision at the superfluous statement. “I’m not worrying,” he replied curtly and, with a flash of his signature smirk, he flew away to their designated starting positions.

Madam Hooch briskly walked into the middle of the pitch and started to lecture about fair play and the general rules to a group of students which were barely listening to her anyway, thanks to the fact that they were too focused on glaring at their opponents to mind her speech— which was, after all, just the same as every other Quidditch match. Their eyes darted towards the middle of the pitch when the commentator blurted out the release of the Quaffle, the Bludgers and the Snitch, and then the usual chaos that accompanied every Quidditch match began in earnest, as players whooshed around at breakneck speeds and people screamed themselves hoarse for the sake of their teams.

James flew near the three rings that he had to defend, while his eyes scanned the pitch for the Slytherin Chasers, his mouth shouted orders at the Gryffindor Chasers and his hands gestured furiously in front of him. Robinson, one of the Slytherin, zoomed next to him while he was occupied with directing the field around him, with the Quaffle tucked securely under his arm. He smirked as he prepared himself to throw the ball and score valuable points, but a Bludger hit him in his ribs and as he instinctively let go of the Quaffle to clutch at his chest, the Gryffindor Chaser, Malkin, took it in her hands and flew away with a satisfied smile.

“Good one, Georgia,” James barked, as he complimented someone for the first time that day. His eyes eagerly followed her form as she flew past the Slytherin Beaters and reached the other side of the pitch, but when she threw the Quaffle towards a goal and the Slytherin Keeper saved it with an easy flick of his wrist, he quickly retracted his previous praise.

“Is that your one hundred and twenty percent, Malkin?” James roared heatedly, as his face angrily reddened. “Where are those Bludgers, Wood? What are you waiting for? Are you a Beater or what?”

Wood flew next to Albus and darkened as his gaze fell on their verbally abusive captain. “Tell him something and get him off our backs,” he muttered grumpily, while he deliberately hit a Bludger in James’ general direction.

“What should I tell him?” Albus helplessly replied, even as his eyes scanned the sky for the elusive Snitch. “He won’t listen to anybody when he’s in one of his moods.”

“Then you’d better find that damn Snitch soon,” Wood snapped icily, before he flew away again.

Scorpius dived down towards the pitch, while his eyes, like Albus’, desperately raked the surroundings for the swiftly-moving Snitch. All he had to do was to catch it before Albus did and then flaunt his victory in front of James Potter for the rest of his life. As his daydreams of victory were interrupted by the humiliated individual starring in them, he glared at the Gryffindor as he flew next to him, and James glared straight back at him.

“Hey, Albus,” cried James, “remember what I told you to do.”

Scorpius abruptly turned his broom and flew back in front of James, with his eyes fixed on James’ stormy orbs instead of any potential glints of the Snitch’s golden body. At that moment, Albus flew towards his brother as well, and his face darkened at the arrogant rage his brother projected.

“Give it a rest, will you?” Albus snapped, but he was prevented for turning away when the elder Potter furiously retorted his rhetorical question.

“No, I won’t,” James bit out venomously. “Get rid of your little  _boyfriend_  and perhaps I will.”

“Shut up, Potter,” Scorpius snapped back harshly, “don’t you see how insufferable you are? Not even your own brother wants to listen to you anymore, you know.”

James glared at Albus and gritted his teeth at the dark look in his younger brother’s eyes. “I’ll get rid of him myself then,” he huffed curtly, while he started flying away from them. He gesticulated towards Wood and forced the latter to fly towards him, while he attempted to keep his attention on the field and scream at his brother about the Snitch at the same time.

Scorpius flew next to Albus again and glared daggers at the other boy’s elder sibling. “I swear, if he keeps up with this annoy—” However, before he could finish his comment, Scorpius’ words were forced to stay in his mouth when a Bludger whistled past and missed his ear by a few inches.

“Better watch your head,  _Scorpion_ , or it’ll come straight off,” James hollered derisively, even as he gave the bat back to Wood and sneered in the Slytherin Seeker’s general direction.

Scorpius narrowed his eyes as he leant forward on the broomstick and made an unavoidable beeline towards the Gryffindor Keeper that was too quick and far too unexpected for James to have any hope of getting away from. The enraged boy crashed his broom into James’ one and knocked him off, in the way the Gryffindor Keeper would have wanted to send him off.

James let out a rather unmanly scream and the crowd held its breath as he fell down from his lofty perch in front of his rings. Madam Hooch glared at Scorpius, but when the Slytherin Seeker dived straight after him, she interpreted it as a kind gesture and her harsh scowl gave way to a sigh of relief. Maybe, just maybe, Scorpius Malfoy hadn’t done that on purpose.

James thudded painfully onto the ground, while his broom fell a few inches from him, and though he stretched a hand out towards the broomstick, Scorpius kicked it away and angrily threw himself at the fallen boy. As the Seeker’s hands shot violently to his red robes, he yanked James’ chest off the ground and hissed when the Gryffindor boy gripped the Slytherin’s wrists.

“You wanted me to be knocked off my broom,” Scorpius jeered icily, “Well, isn’t that very fair from a Gryffindor?” He sat on his ribs and shoved him back onto the ground with his weight.

“You don’t deserve anything fair, Malfoy,” James hissed back, “not when you’re the son of a Death Eater.” He bent his knee and kicked Scorpius forcefully in the back, which abruptly cut off the other’s air supply.

Scorpius rolled off him with a muffled hiss of pain, before he gritted his teeth and stood up quickly to face the downed boy near him. “Really?” he whispered, while he narrowed his eyes and sneered contemptuously at the Keeper. “Because I’m sure that your family is perfect, since you’re the poor grandson of the poor Weasleys.”

James lurched towards him and roughly shoved at his chest, before he watched him fly onto the patchy ground. Although Scorpius coughed, he still had enough energy to glare at the elder boy. “I’m the son of Harry Potter,” James reminded him with a smirk, “and you’re repulsive, Malfoy,” he snapped, and added coldly, “especially since you had to knock me off to try and win this match.”

Scorpius looked at him disgustedly. “No, Potter,  _you_  are the repulsive one.” He looked around himself, but the majority of the crowd was busily looking at Albus, who was fervently pursuing the Golden Snitch around the pitch’s massive airspace. “At least I don’t shag my little cousin,” he finally blurted out to get the Gryffindor’s attention.

There was nothing else that Scorpius could’ve said that would have made James react the way he reacted; his face fell at once, and the burning fire of his anger was overwhelmed by a frosty fear that invaded his innards and pervaded every limb of his body. The icy dread melting in his stomach was reflected in the pallid complexion that belied his nausea, and the sneering arrogance once present on his face was replaced by a thousand feelings, of which were fear, anger, anxiety, pain, and sickness. He staggered a little as he took some wobbly steps back, and though his mouth opened, no sound could make its way out of the choked lump in his throat. He shook his head softly and almost jerkily, and Scorpius was suddenly afraid that the Gryffindor boy was going to cry. However, instead of an onslaught of tears, the Slytherin boy got an onslaught of dust as James turned on his heels and ran away, while his broomstick, like everything else concerning the match, laid forgotten on the Quidditch pitch.

Scorpius watched his retreating back and was suddenly aware of the terrible ramifications of his careless comment. He continued to stare at James’ fleeing figure with his eyes until he disappeared off the field and, when Albus landed noisily next to him, he seemed to not even notice his friend’s presence. The Quidditch pitch started to spin around him, the noise of the crowd melted with the blood that was pounding wildly in his temples, and as his vision blurred sickeningly for a few frightening moments, he felt as if he was going to be sick himself.

“What happened?” Albus piped up in concern, and Scorpius felt as if the other’s voice came from another distant place and another long-lost time. “Hey, where’s James going?”

Scorpius didn’t answer him at all; in fact, he barely glanced his friend’s way. Instead, his eyes darted towards the crowd of Gryffindors that was cheering for a reason that he didn’t care to discover anytime soon. They were half hidden by their bright scarves and even brighter posters and they were moving and talking at the same time. There was such a mass of them and they were so squeezed together in the terraces that they seemed ready to fall down with the creaking structure.

“Where’s Rose?” Scorpius asked nervously, even as his eyes skittered over the crowd in a frantic attempt to spot her amongst her fellow housemates.

“What?” Albus retorted incredulously, as he couldn’t find a link between a fight between his brother and his best friend and the location of his cousin.

“Where’s Rose?” the Slytherin Seeker roared angrily, before he finally shifted his attention towards Albus.

“Back at the castle,” Albus answered confusedly, and quickly explained his answer, “she said that she wasn’t feeling well and that— _hey_!” However, before he could finish talking, Scorpius wasn’t listening to him anymore, as he had already sprinted away to find Rose. He ran, out of the pitch and up the hill that brought him to the castle, despite his shortness of breath, and tripped over rocks and roots, and though he almost fell at times, he never stopped his frantic running.

If he was the first person to whom Rose told her secret, then it was very likely that he had also been the last one to hear it, and since James didn’t seem the kind of man that went out screaming his affairs in the Great Hall, James had probably already understood that Rose was the one responsible for telling him. The real problem laid in the fact that James Sirius Potter was well known for his rough mannerisms and for flying into rages, and Scorpius had a really good feeling that he didn’t want to know what he could potentially do to Rose.

As he managed to stagger his way to the castle’s imposing oaken door, he knew that there were only two places where he would be able to find her: the library and the Gryffindor common room. If she was in the latter then there was nothing that he could do but wait for her to come looking for him and pray for her safety, but if she was in the library, then he stood a chance of protecting her. With that thought in mind, he ran towards the library, while he chewed his bottom lip until it bled and clenched and unclenched his hands.

He dashed through endless corridors and up the winding stairs while his Quidditch shoes thudded a loud staccato rhythm on the stone floor and his panting whooshed out louder with every second that passed. When he finally reached the library, he pushed its majestic door open and called Rose’s name on the top of his voice – or at least, with the paltry amount of air that he still had left in his lungs.

Madam Pince shushed him as she cast him a scandalised glare, but he didn’t bother to pay her any of his attention as he started to scurry amongst the shelves and holler out her name even more forcefully than he had before. With every step he took, he felt his heart pounding even more loudly and painfully in his aching chest, while the hopefulness attached to finding her there and confirming her safety with his eyes melted slowly before his mind’s eye, like snow under the sun.

Finally, his efforts were rewarded with something more than stony disgruntlement. “Scorpius,” a tiny voice murmured from behind a shelf.

Scorpius went towards the soft voice and beheld Rose, who was leaning on a table covered with various books and several pages of her notes with a single pale hand. The quizzical look on her face expressed her inability to understand why he would burst into a library and be engaged in the activity of screaming her name out, instead of being at the Quidditch match that should’ve been on at that time.

“Rose,” he panted, while he slumped down and fought to catch his breath again. He stumbled towards her and pulled her in a tight hug, while he buried his head into her shoulder and sighed in exhaustion and anxiety. “Are you alright, Rose?”

Rose raised her eyebrows at his random query. “Well, yes… shouldn’t I be?” she slowly replied, as she struggled to understand the intent behind his words.

Scorpius let her go and backed up a little as a flash of worry flitted through his eyes. “Where’s James?” he asked anxiously, while he looked around at the disapproving students seated near him.

“I thought he was at the match, like you probably should be now.” She cast him an odd glance and scowled at his wild appearance. “Why, what’s happened?”

“Didn’t you see him?” Scorpius asked again insistently, and Rose’s scowl deepened when she realised that he was not really listening to her.

“No, I told you, he must still be at the match you’re supposed to be playing in,” she replied in extreme exasperation. “Why?”

Scorpius looked at her with his face twisted in an almost desperate admission of guilt. “Oh, Rose, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do what I did,” he groaned in agony, “I… I don’t know what got into me. We were fighting and he was insulting my father and then… oh, I’m so sorry, Rose…”

The Gryffindor girl frowned at the other’s broken confession. “What are you even talking about, Scorpius?” she questioned sharply, though her voice was not able to hide the vague sense of fear that crept up her spine.

The Slytherin boy swallowed thickly at her query. “It slipped from me by accident, I swear. I honestly didn’t mean to tell him what you’d said…”

“Scorpius, what are you talking about?” she repeated again, but her voice had been reduced to a barely-audible whisper.

“I told James that I knew,” he finally mumbled, after a period of heavy silence had hung in the stale tension between them, “I-I said that I knew of your relationship.”

At the other’s chilling words, the world lurched sickeningly around Rose’s inert form, and for a moment the room’s heavy air felt both cold and hot at the same time. She had to grip the desk so that she could avoid falling down, and one of her hands curled into a tight fist that caused her nails to imprint little half-moons into her flesh. She turned towards her books and started to put her things away in a mechanical fashion, with her face bleached a ghostly white and her hands shaking uncontrollably before her.

“Rose,” murmured Scorpius, “I’m sorry, I swear I am…”

She turned to look at him then, as waves of loathing malice radiated from her rigid form. “I bet you are, you filthy little traitor,” she hissed, while she glared at him with an intense and bitter hatred.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“It was a secret, Scorpius,” she cried as she raised her voice in the library for the first time in all her life, “I trusted you with something important, and you betrayed me.” She shook her head miserably and fought to keep her tears back as she gritted out her final accusation. “Not only that, you had to tell James, of all the people in this place.”

He groaned. “It slipped out from me, I swear…”

“Well then, if there’s ever a ‘next time’, perhaps you should bite your tongue before you even think about speaking of other people’s business!” she snapped furiously, and bit off any lame excuses the boy had to offer. She angrily threw her bag over her shoulder and stiffly walked past him.

“W-Where are you going?” he asked weakly, while his eyes forlornly begged her to answer him.

However, she didn’t turn or deign to answer his hesitant query. Instead, she just kept going until she was out of the library and away from him.

***

James kicked his trunk and screamed irately as he did so. He grabbed the curtain that had hung behind his bed for years and tore it into pieces, before he kicked the trunk again and finally resorted to punching the unoffending wall with his tightly-clenched fists. The hurt and the pain from his self-inflicted abuse helped him focus on something different from Scorpius and Rose, and despite the fact that he knew that his body could probably stand little more of his own abuse, he continued at it anyway. He cried out and punched the wall again and again, until heavy drops of sticky blood fell on the floor from his heavily lacerated knuckles. He was sure that Rose was torturing him for what he had done to her by betraying their secret to somebody else, but he would have preferred to suffer the Cruciatus Curse a hundred times over rather than let Scorpius Malfoy know about them.

He punched the wall another time and was busily grinding his fist against the stones when two arms sneaked around his waist and a hand reached for his horribly tense shoulder to squeeze it, while a little body leant its slight weight against his back. He held his breath as he recognised the soft sound of those tears, and he knew them well because he had been the one to make them run freely countless times before.

He stiffened his back, but didn’t move, though his distant look became harder and he gritted his teeth so hard that his jaw throbbed with pain. “Have you told someone else about us?” he bit out, despite knowing the answer to his question already.

She tightened her arms around him and dug her head into his back, while she soaked his Quidditch uniform with the salty sorrow of her tears. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed, though it came out a little muffled and slightly inaudible to her elder cousin.

James didn’t answer or even bother to challenge her indirect response to his harsh query. For some strange reason that he didn’t quite understand, the effect of her little body clenched forcefully against his soothed his rage and, for a moment, it filled him of wonderful memories and love. However, when his mind reignited the dark anger that was more potent than anything he’d ever experienced in his life, he forced himself to stay still. “You’ll definitely be when the whole school knows,” he snapped venomously. “Did you tell him about the baby while you were at it?”

She sniffled noisily before she finally answered his harsh question. “No,” she whispered, “I swear.”

James pushed his fist painfully against the wall and ground his teeth when more crimson droplets oozed from the numerous cuts on his hands. “Go away,” he hissed through his acute discomfort.

She just hugged him all the more tightly while her head pressed into his back almost painfully.

“Rose, go away already,” he repeated in a more desperate tone. “Just leave me alone.”

Rose sobbed at his words and clung more firmly onto his back. “Please, James, you can do whatever you want to me… just don’t send me away,” she pleaded against his back, while his shirt got damper as the seconds ticked by.

James gritted his teeth, and though a part of his brain was screaming at him to turn and hug her, the other part was hissing to push her out of the dorm and lock the door between them. He cried in frustration at his conflicted emotions and punched the wall another time, while his developing bones creaked dangerously from the violent treatment he continued to inflict onto them.

Rose’s arms tightened still further at his furious actions. “James, don’t…” she whispered weakly, but he just punched the wall even more forcefully at her refusal. “James, please…” She sneaked her hands up his chest and gripped his arms with her tiny fingers in a pathetic attempt to pull them away from the wall, but he continued to stay within arm’s length of the bloodied stones in front of them.

“Go away,” he repeated despairingly. “Rose, just go…”

She let him go when she realised that she could do nothing to persuade him otherwise, and James could hear everything as she left him. Her soft steps as she walked away, the hushed sobs that she didn’t even try to restrain, and the door when she closed it gently at her back… all those sounds echoed throughout the desolate expanse of his mind. He allowed his head to thud harshly against the wall as his heavy breaths quickened and his heart jolted almost painfully in his ribs.  _What have you done?_  He heard his brain screaming at him, but he found himself at a loss for words as the accusation flew furiously through his mind.  _What have you done with Rose’s life?_


	5. Thicker than Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter of the first part of this story. From the next one, get ready for things to start to actually happen!

***

Lily sat at the foot of Rose’s bed and crossed her arms as she looked at Rose like she was the cause of all the sorrow in the world. After she stared for a while, she took a deep breath and huffed it back out again. Her cheeks were slightly flushed and her mouth was closed in a thin line, but with that single breath, she managed to school her facial features into a more relaxed state. She waited for Rose to turn on the bed and look at her through her messy hair, before she haughtily raised her chin and levelled a piercing gaze at her elder cousin.

Rose brought a hand to her face and rubbed at her tired eyes with her knuckles, while her half-buttoned shirt shifted slightly and revealed a little more of her barely-visible plain bra underneath. Her socks were down around her ankles and her skirt was more wrinkled than usual, but the former slid down even further and the latter hitched up to a rather unladylike level as she continued to shift around. Eventually, when she was feeling a little more awake, she pushed herself up on her elbows and raised her torso a little to look at her cousin through sleepy and slightly bewildered eyes.

“Lily,” she groaned, with her voice slurred by her interrupted sleep, “what are you doing here?”

“I’m checking on you, I guess,” she replied immediately, though her voice was harsher than she had intended it to be.

Rose frowned slightly at the comment, before she straightened a bit more and looked a little closer at Lily’s unamused countenance. “What?”

Lily nodded wearily. “I’m checking on you,” she repeated slowly, “because you weren’t at breakfast this morning.”

Rose swung her legs over the bed and sat up opposite from Lily so that her back was facing her cousin. She brought a hand to her head, which spun for the sudden movement, and finally bothered to respond to the other girl. “Yeah,” she muttered, “I guess I didn’t feel too well, so I decided not to go.”

“It seems to happen a bit  _too_ often lately, don’t you think?” Lily probed sharply.

Rose didn’t turn, but she could feel Lily’s eyes boring holes into her back. “I guess I caught something,” she replied curtly, as she became just a little irritated at the other’s biting interrogation.

“In that case, I guess the whole world has caught something,” Lily snapped in irritation.

“What are you talking about?” Rose grabbed one of the bedposts and stood up, before she brought a hand to her belly, like she was getting used to doing lately. Her stomach was vaguely swollen by now, and though it wasn’t round enough for people to notice anything, it was enough to make it difficult for her to button her skirt over the slight bump of her belly. Sometimes, when she caressed it in the Great Hall, she could feel James’ eyes on her.

“I’m talking about how people seem to act eerily around you these days,” Lily shot back bitingly, and her eyes glared daggers at Rose as she swept around the bed and came to stand before her hunched figure.

“I didn’t notice anything,” she muttered quietly, but the words sounded pitiful to her own dulled ears.

“No?” Lily hissed back sharply. “You don’t ever notice James practically disappearing when you enter a room, you don’t see that Scorpius seems to be looking at you all the time as if he doesn’t have the courage to talk to you, and you don’t notice Albus trying to understand what’s wrong with the three of you to the point where he basically spends all his time by his own nowadays? Really, you don’t notice  _any_ of these things?”

Rose gripped the curtains around her bed and took a deep breath. “Is that all?” she asked, while she raised her eyebrows and fought to keep her annoyance down.

“No,” Lily muttered morosely, as her hands fidgeted nervously against her arms. “You never seem to notice Hugo and I when we try to cheer you up, because you’ve been acting incredibly gloomy for over a month now.” She stopped and stared so intently into Rose’s eyes that the older witch had to look away from the sheer intensity of it.

“Gloomy?” Rose bit back, while her teeth worried at her bottom lip. “I thought that your mum called gloominess ‘hormones’.”

“Well, I call it gloominess,” she retorted. “So, are you going to tell me what’s up now?”

Rose shook her head slightly and turned to look out of the window beside her. “No, because there’s nothing wrong with me,” she replied curtly.

“Rubbish.”

“If I say nothing, it’s nothing, okay?” she snapped, and unconsciously raised her voice.  

“You lie as bad as your brother, you know?” Lily hissed furiously.

Rose couldn’t restrain the smirk that welled up at the biting accusation. If she lied so badly, as her younger cousin said, then why had nobody noticed her illicit relationship with James for the past few years? No, Lily was so wrong that she could barely keep a grin from splitting her face into two.

“Listen up, okay?” Lily interjected suddenly, and cut through the other girl’s thoughts in an instant. “I’m not Aunt Hermione or Uncle Ron, and I don’t want to know why your marks are lowering or—”

“My marks aren’t lowering,” Rose pointed out indignantly, but her comment went completely ignored.

“—why you keep sleeping and eating instead of going to the library to help me out with my homework, like you used to do,” she paused for a moment, but then continued talking as if she’d never stopped, “and why you don’t talk to almost anybody… but really—”

Rose finally turned to look at her, and something other than exasperation made its way onto her face. “You need help with your homework? You came here just to ask me for  _that_ ?” she asked incredulously.

Lily stood up and dug her hands into her hipbones. When Rose did that, she looked extremely like her mother or their grandmother, but when Lily did that gesture, she looked like her own mother, and the effect was quite strange. It made Rose want to laugh and flee at the same time, but she was prevented from doing either when the other girl spoke up again. “It’s not only that, you know,” she answered tiredly. “We’re worrying about you as well.”

“ _We_ ?” she asked, and though she tried to conceal her sudden burst of hope, some of it managed to trickle into her voice.

“Hugo and I,” Lily snapped huffily, “seriously, Rose, are you even listening to me anymore?”

Rose looked away as a hollow feeling abruptly settled into her heart. “Well, what do you want me to do about it, Little Miss Perfection?” she enquired sourly.

Lily rolled her eyes at her cousin; she hated it when Rose used the nicknames that she had once used on the other girl. “Just come down and have something to eat while we chat about how insufferable Wood is or how good looking James Catesby is these days, okay? It’ll be infinitely better than sitting here all day, at the very least.”

Rose heaved an exhausted sigh. For a moment, her normal life seemed so close to her that all she really had to do was seize it and keep on doing what she had done until that fateful November day, when she had pilfered that pregnancy test charm from the Hospital Wing and found out that nothing would ever be the same again. However, the dizziness from her realisation settled down, and it didn’t take too long for her mind to return to her broken life, and the bleak future that now lay before her unwilling person in the shape of the box that she had taken from the professor, and which caused her heart to contract painfully in her chest.

“Rose, are you even here?” Lily huffed in annoyance, as she waved a hand in front of her glazed eyes.

Rose blinked and found her thoughts dissipating into thin air once more. “What?” she mumbled confusedly, as she was thrown back into the reality of her current situation.

“I asked you if you were coming with me or not… so, are you?” Lily nodded towards the door and raised her eyebrows to further emphasise her point, before she started to make her way towards the stairs.

Rose sighed and placed a hand on her stomach, and was slightly amused to hear a low rumble issuing from it. “Okay,” she replied quietly, “I might as well, since I’m feeling a bit hungry.”

Lily grinned at the affirmative reply and traversed the rest of the distance to the stairs. “Let’s go to the Great Hall then. After all, I’m sure that nobody will complain if we help ourselves with lunch a bit earlier than usually.”

“Yeah,” Rose responded a little absentmindedly, as she did her shirt up and unsuccessfully tried to tame her wild hair in front of a mirror. She sighed in exasperation when her own hair refused to listen to her and turned away to follow Lily down the stairs as she murmured, “I hope there’ll be potatoes when we get there.”

***

Albus sucked thoughtfully on the tip of his Sugar Quill. The library seemed so quiet in those days… well, by a library’s standards, in any case. Naturally, since it was the last few days before the Christmas holidays, everybody was outside. Most of the students were busy throwing snowballs to each other and laughing as they drank hot Butterbeers at Hogsmeade and sliding on the frozen Lake near its precinct.  _Or, at least, everybody who has friends in their right minds would be doing that,_ Albus mused bitterly.

It had been more than a month since James started to walk around like a zombie, and he showed no signs of turning human anytime soon. He never talked, he never smiled, and he never laughed anymore. Instead, he just entered a room, looked carefully around himself to confirm Merlin only knew what and, if he was fine with what he saw, he sat in a corner and stared at the wall for hours on end.

If that wasn’t enough, Rose and Scorpius weren’t talking to each other either. They sat as far from one other as they could in every classroom and never even bothered to glance up to see what the other person was doing. At first, Albus had sat with them, once with Rose and once with Scorpius, as he unsuccessfully tried to understand what was going on, but they always dismissed his questions with a snort and some choice curses breathed under their breaths. Eventually, Rose had started to sit with Mary Cook, a small Hufflepuff who attended most of the classes Rose had, and Albus had given up on sitting next to her.

Lily and Hugo seemed the only ones in their right minds, but Albus didn’t have time to waste with them. They were still midgets, as James called them, even if they were two years below him, and though he had almost felt an adult when he was their age, he knew better now.

However, Albus’ thoughts were lost when, at that exact moment, someone dumped a pile of books next to him with a loud crash, which almost made him choke on the Sugar Quill that he had been engrossed in sucking during his mental meanderings.

“I can’t believe it!” a voice muttered irately in front of him.

Albus raised his eyes to see who had snapped him out of his thoughts, and met a set of rather familiar eyes. “Jack,” he sighed, as he pulled his piece of parchment from under the books that Jack Wood had thrown onto the table. “What are you doing in the library?” he asked in a daze.

Wood noisily dragged a chair over to sit next to Albus and collapsed onto it with a groan. “What does it look like to you, huh?” he muttered grumpily, after he’d taken a book from the pile and flipped to a random page inside.

“It looks like you’re studying… but I don’t really think that’s all that likely,” Albus murmured in response.

“Very funny, Albus,” he commented icily. “I’m only doing this because we have five essays due this week.”

“I know,” Albus answered curtly, but the other boy didn’t take the hint to be quiet.

“I’m only here because your cousin is nowhere to be found,” he continued a little sadly.

Albus rolled his eyes and barely suppressed a snort of derision. “Is there ever a time in your life when you’re not thinking about Rose?” he asked with a great deal of annoyance.

Wood looked at him and, by his horrified expression, it was obvious that he was scandalised by the other’s comment. “No, there’d never be!” he exclaimed rather loudly, and continued to protest, despite the dirty glances being cast his way by the other students. “I need her every moment of my life, you know. I need her to help me with the essays right now, for example.”

“Well then… why don’t you ask her to marry you?” Albus mumbled dryly, and heaved a long-suffering sigh after he’d spoken.

“I did, but she refused immediately,” Wood replied idly, while he flipped through the pages set before him.

Albus choked on his Quill for the second time that day, and spent a while coughing before his body finally decided to calm down. “You did?” he enquired hoarsely.

Although Wood didn’t look at him, Albus saw the evident smirk spreading across his face. “No,” he replied in great amusement. “But I will someday.”

“…And she’ll say no,” Albus pointed out quickly, during another series of rather hoarse coughs that earned the pair more dirty looks from everyone, “just like every other time that you ask her for something.”

Wood shrugged slightly, as if he was greatly convinced that it would take much more than a thousand refusals from Rose Weasley to make him change his mind about the girl that he was set on marrying, and briefly shifted his gaze to look at the other boy. “Do you think she’s with someone?” he asked conversationally, as if he had been asking about the weather instead.

Albus turned to stare incredulously at his fellow Gryffindor, but the boy seemed to be too focused on the pages of the book that he was reading to return his look. “I think we would know if she was with someone, wouldn’t you think?” he stated flatly.

“I was thinking about her—”

Albus rolled his eyes again, and barely managed to suppress yet another sigh. “You tell me.”

“—and I worked out that,  _maybe,_ she had a secret affair with your Slytherin friend,” Wood finished in a rather flat tone of voice.

Albus opened his mouth to say something, but since he couldn’t find anything appropriate to say, he let it close again.  _Rose and Scorpius?_ No, of course that wasn’t possible. First of all, they were always with him and he would have noticed if anything had changed in their dynamic, and furthermore, they would tell him about these things. Why wouldn’t they tell him anyway? Did they think that he would be jealous of their relationship? He snorted at the thought and hastily pushed it away. He wasn’t in love with his cousin, because the thought alone was enough to make him sick, and he didn’t even want to take the thought of love into any sort of consideration with Scorpius. Finally, he decided to give some sort of answer to Wood, but it didn’t come out as he had expected it to. “They aren’t talking to each other, that’s for sure,” he mumbled with a choked voice.

“I know,” Wood responded casually, “I think that they’ve broken up, that’s all.”

Albus stared unseeingly at the parchment in front of him as Wood’s hypothesis whirled through his head. His statement would have explained an awful lot, now that he thought about it carefully. James had discovered their secret affair and now his current state of depression stemmed from his inability to control her life, as he liked to do with every member of his family. Scorpius and Rose had broken up thanks to James’ meddling, and now they weren’t talking anymore, which meant that Hugo, Lily and he had just been left behind in all this fiasco. Albus swallowed heavily at his conclusions and managed to force out a whispered query. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I thought you knew something about all this,” he replied simply. “You’re always with them, after all. I wanted to know if I’m a good guesser, and I came to you to see if I’d guessed right.”

“Well, if they had ever had an affair, they wouldn’t have told me anyway,” he snapped sourly.

Wood sighed as he turned to yet another page. “What a pity,” he said flatly, as if he hadn’t meant it at all, and airily added, “well, I guess that you’ll be the one who will have to discover the truth behind all this then.”

“What do you mean?” Albus inquired suspiciously, while his eyes became rather fixed on Wood’s profile. “They aren’t really talking to me as well, you know.”

“Have I ever told you that I got your cousin half-drunk once?”

Albus’ eyes seemed ready to pop out of his head and fall on Wood’s shoulder when his brain processed the other boy’s comment. “You did  _what_ , exactly?”

“Oh well, actually, I just gave her a couple of Butterbeers to drink, but your cousin isn’t exactly good with her alcohol, is she?” he asked, while a grin blossomed onto his face.

“I-I don’t know, since she never got drunk at home,” Albus stammered confusedly. He looked at Wood with his eyes still wide and on the verge of falling from his head. “You let her get drunk?”

“Well, I just offered her a couple of Butterbeers last year at Hogsmeade,” he pointed out, and his lips twitched slightly as he continued on talking. “Anyway, it was quite interesting to hear what she had to say. She told me some of your most embarrassing secrets, actually.”

“You’re joking.”

“I know that you take your baths with a little yellow rubber duck sometimes, but she didn’t manage to tell me what you needed it for, because she was laughing too loudly for me to tell what she was saying through it all,” he said, and shrugged as if he did not particularly care to know anyway.

Albus looked horrified at the mere thought.

Wood nodded, almost to himself, and casually changed the subject. “Anyway, she even told me that you spend Christmas day with all your relatives, at the Burrow… it’s your grandparents’ house, isn’t it?”

Albus dumbly nodded in reply. He couldn’t understand where he wanted to go with that conversation, though he had a sneaking suspicion that he’d find out soon enough anyhow.

“Well, that’s perfect!” Wood exclaimed joyously, as he unrolled a piece of parchment and started to write the title of his essay at the very top of it. “You can get your cousin drunk, just like I did before, and she’ll tell you anything and everything about her relationship with Malfoy.”

Albus frowned at the idea. “I don’t think that’s very ethical, actually,” he pointed out thoughtfully.

“Well, you can always live forever with the doubt that your two best friends had an affair behind your back,” Wood replied airily. “Do as you please, I suppose, but in the meantime… can I have a look at your essay?” He finally looked at Albus properly then, and smiled as if they were old friends.

Albus sighed as he grabbed a handful of parchment from his bag and shoved them under Wood’s nose. “I don’t know which one you wanted to see,” he innocently explained when he saw Wood’s horrified look. “By the way, I just wanted to ask you something… why do you like Rose so much?”

Wood smiled fondly as his thoughts flitted to the other’s cousin. “She’s beautiful,” he answered dreamily.

“Lots of girls are beautiful, though…” Albus replied sensibly.

“It’s just that, from the very first day of school, she had never come on to me like all the other beautiful girls had,” he admitted with a low voice, “and because, when she smiles, it’s like she knows something that nobody knows about, and that smile alone is enough to drive me crazy.” He hummed silently to himself, before he triumphantly added, “And she’s smart, too.”

“Really?” Albus asked curiously. He had never considered his cousin under that particular perspective, but he had always wondered what made so many boys his age go numb in front of her, as if they were simply deer stuck in headlights. All he was sure of was that his cousin was as chaste and pure as a flower and he was proud of her for staying like that.

“Yeah, that was my dirty little secret, Albus,” Wood murmured, even as he started to shamelessly copy the essays before him. “Now I’ll have to kill you,” he added a bit too cheerfully, while the amused smile he gave ruined the overall effect of his comment.

Albus rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t suppress the chuckle that welled up upon hearing the empty threat. “Well, I suppose you’ll have to do that after Christmas, because I have to discover a secret affair first,” he replied and, as he lowered his eyes down to his homework once again, he started to write down the opening words to his last essay.

***

Hugo collapsed on the armchair near the fireplace and succeeded in his purpose of startling James from his listless reverie. He sighed and directed his gaze on his surprised cousin, as his blue eyes widened on his freckled face and his hair shook to form a mess of red that shrouded his head.

James raised his eyes to him and frowned to see the little boy, who was somehow his cousin, with such a determined expression on his face. He stared back at him for a while, and brown eyes locked with blue ones for a while before, eventually, he arched an eyebrow and felt his face morph into an annoyed expression. “What do you want?” he hissed sharply.

Hugo shook his head softly in response. “Nothing,” he replied quietly.

James nodded in apparent satisfaction as he looked away, but after a while his eyes returned to his smaller cousin and he found himself looking into Hugo’s impossibly wide eyes once more. “What do you  _want_ , Hugo?” he asked in a rather irritated tone of voice.

“Nothing,” the other boy echoed for the second time that morning.

“Why are you here, then?”

Hugo shrugged guilelessly, as if he himself didn’t know why he was there either.

“Don’t you have friends to hang out with? Homework to do? Stuff to pack for the holidays?” James asked hopefully.

The young Weasley boy pretended to think hard for a moment. “No, no and no,” he replied, and a grin broke out over his face as he refused to fall for James’ obvious hint.

“Where’s Lily?”

“I don’t know,” Hugo replied slowly, “she’s been spending an awful lot of time with Rose lately, so I guess she’s probably with my sister right now.”

James shifted uncomfortably on the couch at the mention of Rose. He didn’t want to know what the girls were talking about, but he sincerely hoped that it wasn’t anything too harmful for him. If it was anything about Rose’s slip-up about their disastrous relationship to Scorpius Malfoy then he knew that he would know about it straight away, because he was sure that Lily would have stomped in the common room and attacked him the instant she heard. He looked at Hugo again and rolled his eyes in annoyance. “Then what do you want with me, of all people?”

“Nothing,” Hugo replied patiently for the third time, and James nearly lost it then.

“Okay, that’s the wrong question to ask, then,” James muttered through the angry haze that threatened to overwhelm him. “Okay, Hugo, why are you staring at me?”

“Because I didn’t have anything to do and I couldn’t find any of my friends or other cousins,” he responded simply, as if the mere reason was obvious enough without his mentioning it. He brought a finger to his lips and tapped them softly, before he quietly added a few more words, “And, you know, because we don’t talk all that often, and I just wanted to talk to you for once.”

James smirked hollowly at the other’s reasoning. “We never actually talk, midget,” he pointed out dryly.

Hugo didn’t seem annoyed by this, and it was probably because he knew James too well to be truly angry at his sarcastic insightfulness. “Yeah, I know,” he replied thoughtfully, “but you were the first person I saw when I entered the common room, so I jumped at the chance to have a constructive talk with you.”

“You talk like your mother when you say that,” James chuckled, though his voice sounded anything but amused.

Hugo simply shrugged in response. “Smart people talk alike, I suppose.”

James rolled his eyes at the nonchalant reply and unconsciously leant forward a little. “Okay then, what do you want to talk about?” he inquired in a slightly curious voice, while he finally snapped his book closed and rested it on his lap.

Hugo thought for a while and his wide eyes narrowed slightly as he silently mused at the deceptively simple question. “What do you think Grandma Molly will cook for Christmas this year?” he finally asked him.

James couldn’t help smiling at the easy query. “Pudding, of course” he answered amusedly. “She always makes a pudding anyway.”

Hugo nodded. “I hope that there’ll be potatoes,” he sighed wistfully, “and naturally the pudding. But you’re right, of course; after all, what’s Christmas without Grandma Molly’s special home-made pudding?” He sighed again and nearly lost himself in his food-filled daydreams, before he finally shook his head and continued talking, as if he’d never stopped to begin with. “Anyway, Rose and I love potatoes. When we’re at home, mum always has to cook potatoes twice a day to appease us.”

James nodded stiffly as he suddenly became uncomfortable at the change in their conversation. He knew that Rose loved potatoes, and he was sure that Hugo knew too, so why did that little midget have to talk incessantly about his sister? Couldn’t he bring up a subject without mentioning Rose in almost every single sentence? “Lily and I love roast beef,” he added abruptly, without even knowing why he did so, “and Albus likes beans.”

Hugo looked away as his face screwed up with concentration. “…What did you get Lily for Christmas?”

James raised his eyebrows, startled at the sudden change of subject, and failed to find a suitable answer. “Why are you asking me this?”

“Talking about food was making me hungry,” he mumbled quietly.

James sighed at the other boy’s childish reasoning. “A perfume bottle,” he answered, and before Hugo could open his mouth, he quickly added, “and I got Albus a Broomstick Servicing Kit to keep his broomstick clean.”

“How about Rose? What did you get for her?”

James looked away as his expression became dreadfully serious at his curious inquiry. He didn’t want to tell Hugo what he got Rose, since that was an extremely personal matter and besides, what was the point in telling him about a present that he would never give her anyway? “Nothing,” he lied smoothly.

“So when are you going to buy her something?” Hugo pressed insistently.

James took a deep breath and released it slowly. “I’ll buy her a book the day after I return home for the Christmas holidays. After all, it won’t take me more than five seconds to grab the first romance novel that I see in Flourish and Blotts,” he replied casually, as he faked a complete lack of interest in something that he had actually started to think about since the Christmas before.

“I got her a book as well,” Hugo responded merrily, before he grinned a little mischievously as a thought entered his head. “Well… what did you get me?”

“You’ll see at Christmas,” James retorted offhandedly.

Hugo pouted when his efforts were thwarted, but didn’t say anything else on the matter. “Have you heard about the items that were stolen from Professor Slughorn’s office?” he asked instead.

James nodded and frowned at the question. “I heard about it, but I’m not quite sure what happened,” he replied, and added inquisitively. “Did they find the perpetrator?”

Hugo shook his head and mirrored James’ frown. “No, they haven’t yet,” he responded thoughtfully, “though all I know is that it happened during one of his Slug Parties. At the end of the party, when he entered into his office, he found a few flagons on the floor, while there were some others in pieces and still others that were missing altogether. Not much happened, but they did find out that the guilty person stole a few phials all containing the same potion. Professor Slughorn said that the concoction that had been stolen was fairly powerful, but he wouldn’t say which potion it was, though.”

James nodded thoughtfully at the news. “Maybe it was some sort of love potion,” he suggested, “and he was simply ashamed to let anybody know about it.” He let out a quiet chuckle and Hugo grinned in reply.

It was good to see James laughing, Hugo thought, since his cousin hadn’t done that in quite a long time. For a while, Hugo had been afraid that James had forgotten how to do it, but he was glad that his suspicions had been allayed positively.

“What?” James asked, after he’d regained his composure and managed to catch the thoughtful expression on Hugo’s face.

Hugo shook his head and resumed his cheerful expression once more. “It’s nothing,” he replied, and added as an explanation of some sort, “I was just thinking that it’s good to have big families.” He sighed quietly and changed the topic once more. “Did you know that my mum wanted another child after me?”

James frowned at Hugo’s thoughtful question. “Really? I didn’t know it.”

Hugo simply nodded in reply.

“And why didn’t she…”

“She couldn’t,” he answered simply. He looked at James and nonchalantly shrugged. “Well, I think that I’m going to go have lunch now.” He sighed quietly as he mumbled under his breath, “I hope there’ll be potatoes there.”

James nodded distractedly as Hugo stood up and walked away from him, and mulled over his younger cousin’s startling revelation once more. Life was so unfair sometimes. People who wanted children didn’t have them, and people who didn’t want them… well…  _Life was_ _just_ _really unfair sometimes_ , and the worst thing was that he couldn’t do anything about it at all.


	6. The Painful Truth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been so thoroughly revised, thanks to my beta Fyrshi, that honestly, whereas I hated it before (the way I wrote it, at least) now I love it. I really hope you'll like it. Really, really, really hope you'll like it. :D 
> 
> PS--Drama and tears ahead.. you are warned!

***

Rose was so frustrated at her current state that she just wanted to scream and cry at anybody and anything in her house.

Her parents had come to pick her and Hugo up at King’s Cross Station two days before and, like every other year, they had hugged her and caressed her hair as they smiled warmly at her and mentioned how proud they were of her and her high marks for the millionth time.

However, they had also flattened her stomach against their bodies… and they hadn’t seemed to notice anything amiss about it. Rose had let out a sigh of relief at that time, but now she felt betrayed that something as important as her pregnancy had gone unnoticed by her own parents. Surely, they felt that something was amiss with her… right?

Her Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny had come to pick up her cousins as well, and it had been torture for Rose to stand in front of James without sparing a glance for him while her mother and her aunt chatted for minutes on end. By the time they’d finished dwelling on unimportant matters, like who had to bring the gingerbread at the Christmas party or when they were supposed to go and buy the present for Grandma Molly, she was ready to tear her hair out from sheer frustration.

That had been two days before, though, and since then, she hadn’t seen her cousins at all. Now, she was at home, where Hugo slept in the bedroom next to hers and the Muggle neighbours came to ask for some salt every now and then… yet she was far from being happy at the semblance of normality that her life had thrust her into.

Her father would work until Christmas Eve, doing fewer hours than usual and spending more time at home with them, as he’d naturally do year after year, while her mother had taken the week off to stay with her children. Being the head of an entire department was useful for many things — other than to get the right laws voted in ― and this was just one of the many perks she enjoyed.

Rose loved this time of the year, when her mother cooked her and Hugo’s favourite dishes and accompanied them as they went shopping in Diagon Alley. She and Hugo played Wizard’s Chess every evening with their father and, though Ron defeated them every single time, Hermione joined them in their revenge. She’d read from The Tales of Beedle the Bard or prepare some hot cocoa after their evening came to a close, and they’d all go to bed at a reasonably late time.

Until that moment, everything was still exactly the way it had always been… but little did Rose know that everything was going to change for the worse very soon.

***

“Rose, are you listening to me at all?”

The daydreaming girl raised her eyes to meet those of her father and her blank expression melted slowly on her face as she finally became aware of the fact that he had been talking to her. “I’m sorry, I think I drifted off for a bit… um, what did you say again?” she asked quietly, as she sunk her fork into her mother’s meat pie.

“I asked you if you could pass me the salt,” Ron replied resigned, “and I’ve asked you about five times now, if I had to guess at a number.”

Rose sighed as she looked around herself and spotted the small salt shaker near her elbow, before she grabbed it and stretched her arm out towards her father.

“Thank you,” Ron mumbled, while he took the salt shaker from her hand. He turned to look at Hermione, who was trying to convince Hugo to eat some salad with absolutely no success whatsoever, and asked, “What’s happened to your daughter, Hermione? She’s always distracted as of late.”

Hermione didn’t look up from Hugo’s plate as she filled it with more salad, but she smiled slightly as she paused in her cajoling. “Why is she _my_ daughter when she does something odd?” she asked amusedly.

Ron grinned as well. “Well, Rose?” he asked, as he brought some potatoes towards his mouth.

Rose sullenly lowered her eyes to her own plate. “Well, what?” she muttered back.

“You aren’t talking much in these days,” Ron responded casually, “and being so silent isn’t something that suits you very well, you know.”

“Mum, that’s enough!” Hugo complained loudly, even as he tried to cover his plate with his hands.

“Your father’s right, Rose,” Hermione added softly, as she finally placed the salad bowl back onto the table and looked up into her eyes. “Is there anything that’s been upsetting you lately?”

Rose narrowed her eyes as she glared stubbornly at her unoffending meat pie. “No,” she replied stiffly, and stabbed at her meal a little vehemently, “there’s nothing wrong at all.”

There was a moment of silence in which Rose hoped that they wouldn’t ask her anything else, before Ron took a deep breath and turned towards Hermione. “I talked with Harry today,” he mentioned nonchalantly. “He wanted to know when you were free to go to Diagon Alley with Ginny… you know, for my mum’s present and all.”

Hermione helped herself to some salad and shrugged as she chewed on a mouthful of vegetables. “I’m always free these days,” she replied, after she’d swallowed her greens, “I just have to stuff the turkey for Christmas dinner, but I can do that on Christmas Eve. Any day’s fine, really.”

Ron nodded at her reply. “I’ll tell him then.” He smiled, and added thoughtfully, “Maybe you can go with them, Rose.”

Rose sighed again. “Is anybody else going?” she asked, as she tried to sound casual and barely succeeded in doing so.

“Maybe Lily or Albus will come if you’re coming as well,” Hermione answered gently. “You could write to them and ask them if they want to come with you, and I’m sure that it’ll be less boring to wander in Diagon Alley with them rather than follow your Aunt and me into all the clothing shops we find along our way.”

“I guess so,” Rose mumbled, and changed the topic once again. “Can I have some more potatoes?”

“Sure, Rose.” Hermione handed her the frying pan. “Aren’t they feeding you enough at Hogwarts these days?”

Rose shrugged slightly, but didn’t reply to her mother’s teasing question. Luckily, someone else spoke in her place.

“Mum, have I already told you how beautiful you look this evening?” Hugo piped up innocently, even as he glared daggers at his untouched salad. “And how absolutely lovely your hair looks?”

Hermione raised her eyebrows and repressed a chuckle at his blatantly obvious intent. “Say it quickly and in the least painful way you can, Hugo, instead of trying to sweet-talk me into whatever you want.”

Hugo sighed forlornly at his failure, but resolutely continued on after a few moments, “Albus and James are getting new brooms for Christmas and I was thinking—”

“Was it painful for you, Hermione?”  Ron guffawed, laughing at his own supposed wit.

Hermione exhaled tiredly at Ron’s amusement and answered her son’s implications instead. “Hugo, we’ve already talked about what I think of Quidditch and everything related to it. Besides, you live in a Muggle suburb, and they would notice you if you were flying around the garden.”

“I was thinking about keeping it at the Burrow, though…”

Hermione stood up and collected some of the dirty plates to clear away. “We’ll talk about that later,” she replied sternly, as she brought the plates to the sink.

“But Christmas is in five days,” Hugo protested sadly, “you’d never have time to buy one if we don’t speak now, Mum!”

“Well, what if we’ve already gotten you a broomstick for Christmas?” Hermione retorted quickly.

Hugo pouted and huffed as he crossed his arms. “You haven’t, so what’s the point?” he muttered under his breath.

Ron laughed as he peeled an orange. “You think you know more than Father Christmas does?”

“Oh, Dad, grow up already,” Hugo bit back heatedly, and tried to plead his case again. “Mum…”

“I said we’ll talk about that _later_ ,” Hermione answered in a tone of voice that brooked no argument. “And then, if we can agree to something, I’ll talk to your Aunt Ginny.”

Hugo’s face lightened up considerably at his mum’s words. “Really?” he asked hopefully.

“Yes, but only if you eat all the salad you have in your plate,” she replied firmly.

And, much to Ron and Hermione’s great amusement, Hugo devoured all the salad without even bothering to dress it beforehand.

***

A knock on her door made Rose jump and almost let the object she was holding fall to the floor. After a second of momentary confusion, she hurriedly hid it in the depths of her bedside table and exclaimed, “Come in.” She sat on her bed and tried to look as casual as possible.

Hermione opened the door with one hand, while the other carefully cradled a big mug that had one of the Chudley Cannons players zooming around on it. She smiled and walked slowly towards Rose’s bed as she carefully nudged the door behind her. “I made you some camomile tea,” she murmured quietly, as she gave her the warm mug.

Rose smiled in response. “Thank you, mum,” she said, and took a sip of the soothing tea.

Hermione smiled back and gingerly sat on her bed, before she finally began to speak again. “You look odd, Rose,” she started a little worriedly, “you haven’t been eating cucumbers now, have you?”

Rose opened her mouth to answer, but something restrained her from uttering any sort of reply. Half of her brain was telling her to say that she had eaten cucumbers at Hogwarts and that her behaviour was all her allergy’s fault, but the other half was screaming that she was her mother, and that she couldn’t lie to her forever. Her first trimester was almost over; soon her stomach would have become the size of a Quaffle and then become even bigger than that, until people would have looked at her and understood immediately what was going on. It was probably better to tell her mother before she found out for herself, but… “I think there might have been some in the salad the last time I had dinner at Hogwarts,” was what she finally choked out from the depths of her blocked throat.

“Have you been sick?”

She’d been sick pretty much every morning since her second month, but there was no way that Rose was going to tell anyone about that. “Once, but it wasn’t really much…”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it?” Hermione questioned concernedly, even as she looked severely at her. “Do you have a high temperature right now?”

“No, Mum,” she reassured her. “I noticed that I was eating cucumbers so I gave the salad to Albus.” Surely her relationship with James had been helpful, since she could lie almost as well as he did. “I’m fine, Mum; really, there’s no need to worry about me.”

Hermione smiled in partial reassurance. “Maybe it’d be better if you didn’t come with me and Aunt Ginny to Diagon Alley. You should probably rest at home, instead.”

“Mum, I’m fine,” she replied insistently. She sipped from the mug again and widened her eyes slightly as the flavour registered in her mind. “I like this camomile… Mum, where did you get it?”

“Grandma Molly gave it to me,” she replied with a slight smile. “Are you sure you’re alright, though?”

Rose nodded a little wearily at the repetitive question. “Did you really get Hugo a broomstick for Christmas?” she asked in an attempt to change the topic, as she looked askance at her mother.

Hermione couldn’t hide a smile at the curious question. “Not yet,” she confessed, “I need to talk to Aunt Ginny first.”

“So you really _will_ buy him a broomstick?” Rose blurted out, flabbergasted by the response.

Hermione smiled a little wider at her daughter’s astonishment. “He’s tenacious, you have to give him that,” she replied amusedly, “and your father and I can’t really stand his lamentations anymore.”

“But a broomstick…”

“Well, we can’t get him anything less, you know,” she interrupted gently, as her smile became even wider at Rose’s growing shock, “after all, we didn’t want to have too much of a difference between your present and his.”

Rose looked at her mother with wide eyes. “Really?” she asked inquisitively, as her curiosity got the upper hand on her. “What did you get for me?” she blurted out before she could stop herself.

Hermione laughed at the curiosity laced in her daughter’s voice. “I’m not going to tell you, naturally,” she replied amusedly, “all you need to know is that it’s something that you really wanted.”

Rose’s eyes started to shine. If her mother would have asked her what she really wanted at that moment, all she could answer was James and her baby, so no other answer came to her mind. The fact that she really didn’t have a clue excited her to no end, though. “Something that I really wanted…”

“Yes, Rose,” Hermione answered patiently, “your father and I have talked about that, and we have decided that you deserve something nice for this year’s present.”

Rose looked uneasy at the other’s words. “Do I now?”

Hermione smiled warmly. “Yes, you do; after all, we’re very proud of you and your school marks, and the fact that you’re a Prefect and everything else…” She paused for a moment and added tenderly, “We’re very proud of you indeed.”

The camomile seemed to cut through Rose’s throat as she swallowed another mouthful of it. She looked at her mother as her mind completely failed her then, and felt like she had deceived them with her faked innocence and supposed transparency.

“Rose,” Hermione called to her, after she’d given up on waving a hand in front of her frozen features. “Was my confession of pride such a terrible shock to you?”

Rose forced a weak smile to appear on her face as she tried to shake her head as well. “I guess I’m just a little tired,” she replied hoarsely, as she handed the mug back to her mother.

“Don’t you want to go play chess with your father now?” Hermione enquired soothingly. “He told Hugo that if he defeated him, he would buy him the broom.”

Rose smiled again, but it felt like the smile would slip off her face at any given moment. “No, thank you, Mum,” she mumbled inaudibly.

Hermione stood up and bent over her daughter, before she planted a soft kiss on her forehead. “Hmm, you seem a bit hot,” she murmured slowly.

“Mum, I’m fine, really,” Rose retorted hurriedly, and was barely able to keep a civil tone as she did so.

Hermione sighed, but smiled nonetheless as she turned around and walked towards the slightly ajar door. “Good night,” she breathed out softly, before she finally closed the door at her back and left her daughter alone with her thoughts once more.

“Good night,” Rose whispered from her bed, and allowed herself to fall back onto the soft mattress with a dull thud.

***

“I guess that this dress wouldn’t be your mother’s cup of tea… right, Ginny?” Hermione asked with a cheeky grin.

Ginny looked at the dress that Hermione was showing her and smiled in response. “I guess that it would be perfect if it was a bit shorter and maybe sleeveless… oh, and it has to be brighter, naturally.”

Hermione put it back on the shelf with a fake sigh. “Yeah, I guessed that too,” she added through her laughter.

Lily rolled her eyes at the two giggling adults. “Mum, can’t you grab the first dress you see?” she asked in a very annoyed tone of voice. “I bet Grandma won’t be bothered if it’s short or long, or whether it has sleeves or not.”

Ginny sighed at her daughter’s evident irritation. “Lily, why don’t you and Rose go and have a hot chocolate at the Leaky Cauldron while your aunt and I continue our shopping?” she suggested to a very bored Lily. “I’m sure that we’re going to be spending a long time here.”

“I don’t have money,” Lily replied eloquently, though she only succeeded in sounding a bit haughty.

Ginny faked an annoyed expression and rummaged around for some money. “I’ll give you two Galleons then, and I want to see the change later,” she grumbled playfully as she handed her daughter a couple of golden coins. “Wait for us over there, okay?”

Lily snorted at the concern in the other’s tone. “Mum, we aren’t five,” she almost whined.

“Don’t worry, Aunt Ginny,” Rose broke in, even as she grabbed her cousin’s arm and failed in her attempts to drag her away, “we’ll stay there. I’ll make sure of it.”

Ginny smiled fondly at the older girl. “Hermione, do you want to trade my daughter with yours?”

Lily stuck out her tongue at her mother, but Hermione simply hugged her niece and planted a big kiss on her forehead. “No, but you can trade her with Hugo, if you’re willing,” she joked lightly.

“Oh, no,” Ginny responded rapidly, “I already have two, and they are more than enough for me.”

“Okay, well, if you’ve done with all this buying and selling, Rose and I are going to the Leaky Cauldron now,” Lily huffed in an even more annoyed tone of voice, and this time she was the one who dragged Rose away.

“I think that Lily wasn’t really too fond of being traded like that,” Hermione mentioned, as their daughters walked away and the adults’ laughter finally subsided.

“No, she wasn’t really,” Ginny frowned slightly. “I almost regret what I said,” she added thoughtfully, and paused in her perusal of the season’s scarves.

Hermione looked at her through a pile of sweaters and shook her head mildly. “She knew that you were only joking, so there’s nothing to worry about,” she reassured her sister-in-law comfortingly.

“Oh yes, I’m sure she knew,” Ginny murmured distractedly, as she looked at a little red band that she had initially thought was for keeping hair away from the face, but then realised was a skirt instead. She quickly put it back down with a horrified face and finally resumed her conversation after she’d stopped staring at the item of clothing. “I simply want to avoid other problems with my kids.”

Hermione looked at her through a transparent top and quirked an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

Ginny shook her head despondently in reply. “It’s James,” she huffed, “he isn’t talking to us at all.”

“Is he alright?” Hermione asked concernedly, as she showed Ginny a green shirt.

Ginny shook her head, both in response to the shirt and to answer Hermione’s question. “I think that there’s something that is upsetting him a lot, but he wouldn’t say what it was.”

“Have you asked him about it?”

“You know what Harry thinks about interfering,” Ginny murmured with an audible sigh.

Hermione nodded understandingly at her friend’s forlorn whine. “He thinks that you don’t have to force him into talking if he doesn’t want to.” She heaved her own sigh as her mind wandered a bit at her own words. “He’s the completely opposite of Ron when it comes to situations like this.”

“Yeah,” Ginny responded faintly, as she finally reached the section of the store where the clothes were all various shades of midnight blue, and were thus more likely to find something that wouldn’t have clashed too horribly with her mother’s hair. “And the problem is that I’m exactly like Ron,” she confessed quietly, “because I would just like my children to confide with Harry and me from time to time.”

“The problem is that they all grow up so quickly these days,” Hermione mumbled with another world-weary sigh.

“They are,” Ginny agreed gloomily, but it dissipated in an instant as she smiled triumphantly instead. “On the bright side, though, I think we’ve found my mum’s present.” She raised a long and elegant coat that was the colour of the starry night and twirled it around excitedly for her friend to see.

Hermione touched it to feel the material under her fingertips and reciprocated Ginny’s smile seconds later. “I like it,” she nodded happily, “I like it a lot.”

“Let’s just hope that they’ll have mum’s size… although we could always buy her that red skirt to use as a hair band,” she giggled with a mischievous grin.

Hermione looked horrified at her sudden realization. “That was a _skirt_ you were holding back there?”

***

Rose looked attentively at the small box in her hands and swallowed. It would be so easy to simply do what she had in mind and end everything within seconds; after all, everything would be over then, and all this trouble… it’d finally disappear, once and for all. However, she couldn’t have done what she wanted to do right now without first knowing what her other option might’ve brought her, so she closed the box with a sigh and replaced it in its usual position in the drawer of the bedside table.

She walked out of her room and placed an ear on Hugo’s door, just to confirm that he was listening to some music from the computer that their Muggle grandparents had given him for his last birthday. She breathed a relieved breath when she noted that it was high enough to let her talk to her mother without being overheard, and she soon peeled herself from the closed door and continued onwards.

She climbed down the stairs, all the while gripping the railing with much more force than needed, and stepped slowly into the living room where Hermione was wrapping her cousins’ presents. She sat near her on the sofa and watched her oblivious mother for a few moments, before she cleared her throat to announce her presence there.

“Oh, someone came downstairs to help me,” Hermione beamed, after she’d finished putting a big, golden bow on a square package.

Rose simply smiled wearily in response.

“Will you wrap that Quaffle for me, and make sure that you don’t smudge off Viktor’s signature there?” Hermione asked her daughter, even as she herself set the wrapped present aside.

Rose picked it up and looked at the scrawled signature with a light frown. “Who’s this for?”

“Uh, who else could it be for? It’s for James, obviously,” Hermione answered confusedly, as she chose another unwrapped present from a pile of assorted objects.

Rose felt her insides melt into an uncomfortable mess as she started to wrap the Quaffle in red wrapping paper. She reckoned that it would be better if she didn’t think about him at that current moment in time, even if everything she did or saw reminded her of him. She hadn’t heard from him since the last day of school, but she couldn’t stop thinking about him at least once every day, and it was driving her insane. “Did you get Hugo’s broom in the end?” she asked her mother in an attempt to distract herself, though her voice was just a bit too shaky when it came to asking such a simple question.

Hermione’s eyes immediately darted to the stairs in evident concern.

“Don’t worry, he’s listening to his music in his room,” she reassured her mother, who was obviously fretting a fair bit.

“Yes, we did,” she finally whispered in response. “Your father went with your Aunt earlier on. Don’t ask me what kind of broom they bought, though, because I really don’t remember what he told me.”

Rose nodded in understanding as she immediately knew what her mother meant. There was a very probable chance that she wouldn’t have remembered it as well, even if James had spent far too many nights caressing her hair and giving her theoretical Quidditch lessons while he was at it. The Quaffle fell from her hands as she remembered the last night they had spent together on the Astronomy Tower because, despite the fact that the sport of Quidditch wasn’t one of the subjects they brought up then, James didn’t seem to have been displeased by it.

“Rose, Viktor’s been very busy lately and he won’t be able to send us another Quaffle if you ruin that one,” Hermione scolded sternly, even as she bent down to pick up the dropped ball.

Rose nodded guiltily. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, as she lowered her eyes to her shuffling feet. She felt her mother place the Quaffle on the sofa near her before she shifted next to her hunched form.

“Rose, is everything alright?” Hermione whispered tentatively, as she placed her hands on her daughter’s trembling shoulders.

Rose bit her bottom lip and nodded slightly, but then she immediately shook her head and crashed her face against her mother’s shoulder before she could stop herself from doing so, and promptly began to soak her shirt with scalding-hot tears of anguish. “No, Mum, nothing is right,” she cried brokenly. “Nothing is right anymore.”

“What? What’s wrong? Rose, talk to me,” Hermione urged her daughter with a coaxing tone. “You know that you can tell me everything, don’t you?”

Rose gripped her mother’s shirt and wept all the harder at the words. “I did something terrible,” she confessed against her mother’s shoulder, but nothing could have muffled those four little words.

Hermione caressed her hair with a soothing hand. “Was it something more terrible than the time when you crashed Albus’ broom in the Burrow’s quarry and tried to pass it off as Hugo’s fault?” Hermione asked softly as she smiled encouragingly at her sniffling daughter. “Or more terrible than the other time, when you became ill from eating all the pudding by yourself?”

Rose gritted her teeth and dug her head further into the other woman’s shoulder. Her mother thought she was cheering her up with her sweet jokes but, on the contrary, her nostalgic quips were having the complete opposite effect on her. Hermione was making her feel even more terrible than she would have normally been feeling in an already stressful situation like this, and the fact that she was pregnant and consequently highly emotive didn’t help either. “It’s much worse,” she sobbed, “ten times worse.”

Hermione twined her fingers through her daughter’s wild red hair, which was achingly similar to hers, and pressed Rose’s head further into her shoulder. “You know that your father and I don’t care about your marks,” Hermione soothed gently, even as she tried to think hard about the cause of her daughter’s evident dismay.

“It’s not my marks, Mum,” she sniffled thickly.

“Then what is it?” Hermione questioned, though a slight agitation bubbled up in her voice despite her best efforts to repress her more negative emotions. “Rose, you have to talk to me here.”

Rose forcibly swallowed some of her tears and tried to clear the blockage welling up in her throat. “You have to promise me that you won’t tell anybody,” she whispered in a cracked tone. There was still enough time to keep her mouth shut or make up a lie… but maybe, if she made her mother keep her promise and then ensured that she was the only person that knew about her secret, everything would be all right again.

“How can it be so terrible?” Hermione enquired soothingly, but her accompanying smile was anything but reassuring.

“It can be.” She wiped away some tears and looked at her mother through glazed and slightly unfocused eyes. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone… not even Dad, okay?”

Hermione tenderly brushed some hair away from Rose’s tear-streaked face. “If that’s what you want,” she replied, and continued to smile softly at her distraught daughter.

Rose nodded and tried to stop sniffling. She attempted to plaster a weary smile on her face and, when it was finally done fixing itself onto her features, she took a deep breath and exhaled shakily. “I’m pregnant,” she finally whispered, but it was so quiet and unexpected that her mother didn’t even hear it at first.

“What did you say, Rose?” she asked in the same coaxing tone, as she smiled and leant closer to her.

“I’m pregnant,” she moaned, as she finally raised her voice and sobbed loudly once again. She knew that her mother had finally heard her and that she couldn’t go back now, but she still felt incredibly bad when the woman’s hands left her shoulders and fell onto the sofa with a muted thud. It was hard to keep her pain from her eyes as her mother backed away hurriedly and looked at her with big brown eyes filled with astonishment and other unidentifiable emotions.

Hermione opened her mouth to speak again, but when a voice reached Rose’s ears and cut through her thoughts, the girl nearly panicked as she realised that it wasn’t her mother’s.

“What?”

Rose jerked her head towards the door and her heart stuttered in terror as her eyes fell on the infuriated person before her. Her father was standing there. His eyes looked like they were ready to fall out of his face, thanks to the breathless intensity of the look he directed at Rose and, were it not for the tumultuous emotions evident inside his dilated pupils, she would’ve sworn that he was just like a wax statue. His complexion was as white as snow and his freckles stood out against his skin like pools of molten fire, his limbs were so rigid that he could’ve given a corpse a run for its money.

“ _What did you say?_ ” he asked lowly, and his horror reduced his voice to an astonished hiss.

Rose gulped as her lips parted slightly and started to tremble. Within mere seconds, all the heat left her face and her hands, and her limbs suddenly went numb and ceased to obey her mind. She felt her heart starting to beat furiously again, but the blood pulsing through her temples did nothing to help the dizziness that settled on her as soon as her insides disappeared.

“Dad, I…”

“What did you say?” he hissed again, and behind his shock a new and darker emotion arose.

Rose turned to look at her mother, but Hermione simply sat there with her horribly blank eyes, and it was clear that she wouldn’t be able to find even a single word of comfort from her. “Mum…”

She looked away from her, and the curiously blank gaze became all the more indecipherable.

Rose lowered her eyes and felt them well up with tears again. “I’m pregnant,” she finally repeated, though her voice was barely above a whisper. She heard her father step quickly towards her and barely resisted to the urge to make herself limp as his big hands grabbed her arms and yanked her to her feet.

“How did you…” he commenced roughly, without being able to end his sentence.

Rose gulped again and tried to withstand Ron’s traumatised glare. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Ron ignored her and continued to glare at his trembling daughter. “Who is it?” he asked.

Rose’s bottom lips started to quiver even more forcefully as tears fell down her cheeks once again.

“Who’s the father?” Ron demanded harshly, as he shook her arm threateningly.

“Ron,” Hermione murmured emptily from the sofa where she was still sitting, since the shock had petrified the rest of her body and refused to let it move at all.

Ron ignored her as well as the astonishment was finally replaced with a growing haze of anger and terror. “Who is it, Rose?” he screamed into his daughter’s face.

“James,” Rose cried desperately, as she finally began to struggle against the harsh grip her father’s hands had on her wrist.

Ron’s eyebrows furrowed darkly as he seemed to think about whether he knew any boys by the name of James at Hogwarts, and finally frowned slightly in confusion as he barked, “James who?”

Rose was crying without restraint by the time the name was torn from her lips. “James Potter,” she stiffly let out through the copious sniffles and hiccups that cut through the relative silence of the house.

Ron let her go and nearly recoiled from her at the news as he directed a glare that made her feel like she was either the scum of the Earth or someone that he didn’t know at all, while Hermione let out a strangled cry of shock at her daughter’s reluctant admission.

Ron looked as if he was going to be sick for a moment, as his face went a peculiar shade of green, but he recovered enough to slam his hand on the table and look directly into her wide and frightened eyes. “What are you talking about?” he asked, and the slightly breathless laugh that followed his words only served to drive the knife deeper into Rose’s chest. “He’s your cousin, you know.”

Rose closed her fists until she felt her nails dig into her palms. “I know,” she whispered, and her voice cracked as it broke into a fitful sob.

“Hey, what’s going on down there? I can’t even listen to my music in peace if you keep on…” Hugo’s indignant sentence was left dangling in midair as he trotted down the stairs and saw his parents’ faces. The palpable shock on their faces looked as if someone had died and, though he couldn’t see Rose’s face, he was sure that she looked just like them. “What happened? Has someone passed away?” he asked urgently, after he’d leapt off the stairs and hurriedly walked into the living room.

Ron brought a hand to his forehead and passed it over his sweaty brow with a jerky movement. “Go to your room, Hugo,” he muttered, but his attempts to sound calm failed miserably.

“No, I want to know what’s going on, Dad! I’m always left out of—”

“Hugo!” Ron yelled abruptly, as something inside of him finally snapped, “I told you to go to your room!”

“Go, Hugo,” Hermione added faintly, as she nodded softly at her confused son.

Hugo looked from his father to his mother with a seething mix of anger and frustration on his face, before he noticed that his sister’s shoulders were heaving with uncontrollable sobs. As all thoughts of his father’s roared command flew out of his head, the youngest Weasley child reflexively took a step towards his elder sister.

Ron got hold of his arm before he could say anything to Rose and, in a flurry of rage-fuelled movement, he dragged Hugo towards the stairs and roughly pushed him on the first stairs. “Go to your room, Hugo!” he screamed one last time, before he sharply turned back to where he had stood bare seconds ago.

Hugo gulped down any protests he had as he promptly turned away from his father and walked quickly up the stairs. However, when he reached the landing, he didn’t keep on walking to his room; instead, he pressed his head against the railing and tried to listen to whatever was going on in the living room beneath.

“Are you out of your _mind_?” Ron hissed at the shuddering girl before him, and his voice sounded even more threatening now that he was beginning to fail in his attempts to stay calm.

Rose didn’t answer him, even when he made a frustrated noise.

“You know that he’s your cousin, don’t you?”

Rose let out a choked sob at his words, but still refused to answer him.

“…Did he force you?” Ron finally asked, when the relative silence had begun to get a little too oppressive for the three occupants of the room.

Rose raised her eyes to her father’s rigid form with a barely-audible gasp. “No,” she hurriedly choked out, “no, of course not.”

Ron shook his head jerkily and kicked one of the armchairs in a burst of fury, which made the unoffending item roll onto the floor with a few loud creaks. “I can’t believe you,” he growled harshly, before he walked stiffly towards her and raised his hand to slap her on the face.

Rose staggered backwards a little as Ron’s black rage nearly wrenched a terrified whimper from her lips, but she somehow managed to stay on her feet without swaying too much. She gritted her teeth and flung her eyes shut and, even if the pain would probably sting horribly later on, she ordered herself to restrain the frightened tears that she wanted to shed in front of her infuriated father.

Hermione stood up suddenly and reached her husband just in time to see him lower his trembling hand. “Ron,” she mumbled nervously, as she placed a shaking hand on Rose’s trembling shoulder.

“Hermione, stay out of this,” Ron hissed lowly, even as his hand convulsed by his unnaturally rigid side.

Hermione looked outraged at his attempts to make her back down from the argument. “She’s my daughter as much as yours, you know!” she complained loudly, in an attempt to redirect his attention to her.

Ron didn’t look away from Rose or acknowledge his wife’s raised voice. “Did you hear her?” he asked to Hermione, as a maniacal gleam appeared in his eye. “Did you hear what she said, Hermione? James Sirius Potter is the father of her child.” He finally looked at Hermione. “ _My sister’s son is the father_.”

“I know who he is,” Hermione replied firmly, as she held his furious gaze.

“I wonder if Harry and Ginny know that they’re going to become grandparents,” he hissed venomously.

Rose failed to suppress a sniffle at her father’s malicious tone, and Ron looked back at her as if he’d forgotten about the sobbing girl in front of him. “You know what, actually?” he asked icily. “We can check that right now, can’t we?” He grabbed Rose’s arm but, when Hermione tried to stop him, he reacted more rudely than he had intended. Hermione found herself crashing harshly onto the floor as Ron and Rose Disapparated in front of her, and the living room was plunged into a sudden silence when Rose’s terrified screams were swallowed up by the powerful magic.

Hermione cried when her husband’s and daughter’s disappearance hit her, and she banged her fists on the rug under her and gripped the fur with so much force that it tore away at some of the threads woven into it. She only stopped her hysterical fit when a little hand hesitantly alighted on her back.

“Mum,” Hugo asked nervously, after his mother had calmed down somewhat, “where’re Dad and Rose?”

The only reply that he got was a soulful smile and a rather wet hug as his mother buried her face into his shoulder and let out a few more choked sobs. Even if he hadn’t felt Hermione’s shaking head, he knew that his questions would have to wait until later.

***

When Ron Apparated into Ginny and Harry’s living room with his daughter clutched tightly by her arm, he knew perfectly well that he was breaking one of the most important rules of Apparition etiquette but, at that exact moment in time, he absolutely didn’t bother to give a damn. He let go of Rose, who fell on the closest couch, and her face paled with horror when she got over her queasiness and found herself in James’ house.

“Ginny! Harry!” Ron angrily shouted, and he made no move to stray from his daughter’s side, as if he was afraid that she could have ran away if he ever left her alone. “Harry! Ginny!”

Ginny appeared at the door that led to her kitchen with an expression of slight annoyance apparent on her face. “Ron!” she exclaimed in surprise, “you Apparated into my living room!”

Ron paid no attention to her horror at his breach of courtesy, and simply levelled a cold gaze in his sister’s direction. “Where’s Harry?” he asked rather frostily instead.

Ginny stepped in and finally spotted her niece, who seemed to be on the verge of tears as she curled into a tight ball on her couch, and looked positively astonished at the strange sight before her. She cleaned her wet hands on a nearby dishcloth and hurried to her niece’s side, but Ron caught her shoulder in a rough grip before she could touch his daughter. “Where’s Harry?” he asked her again, and his tone clearly brooked no arguments.

Ginny looked at him without understanding the intent behind his cold question. “He’s in the garden,” she replied slowly, and confusedly added, “but Ron, what’s going on?”

“Call him,” he said icily.

“Ron, just tell me what’s—”

“Call him, Ginny!” he roared in impatience, as he had done to Hugo only a few moments beforehand.

Ginny frowned darkly at her brother’s fury, but nonetheless acquiesced to his demand. She quickly went towards the closest window to open it and leaned out to call Harry’s name and, when she got a muffled answer from her husband, she drew her head back inside and looked strangely at Ron. “Will you tell me what’s going on already?” she asked her brother crossly, and huffily crossed her arms.

Before Ron could answer her, Lily appeared at the same door where her mother had stepped out and looked curiously at the scene that had unfolded in front of her. However, before she could voice a greeting to her cousin, her father stepped in and bent down to shake the snow from his boots.

“Ron,” Harry started, and he smiled as soon as he’d spotted his brother-in-law in his living room. “What are you doing here?” He casually looked at Rose and his eyes lit up warmly, as if he could not sense the palpable distress in the room. “Hey, Rose.”

Rose didn’t answer; in fact, she didn’t even raise her head from the fascinating tiles on the floor that she was currently staring at.

“Right, _Potter_ ,” Ron hissed into the awkward silence. “Where’s your son?”

Rose let out a strangled cry at her father’s words, and the Potters’ heads turned towards her. However, before they could ask her about what was wrong, Ron attracted their attention once again. “Where’s your son?” he asked again, and it wasn’t too hard to pick out the agitation in his voice.

Harry tried to smile, despite the slightly insignificant fact that he didn’t have a clue about what was going on, and nearly lost his smile when he finally realised that Ron hadn’t come for a social visit. “Ron, is everything alright?” he asked in faint puzzlement.

“Yes, everything’s fine,” he replied icily, and the sarcasm practically dripped from his frosty tone, “just tell me where your son is and I’ll feel even better, Harry.”

“Ron, you don’t seem as happy as you were when I left you at the Ministry an hour ago,” Harry offered worriedly, as he walked towards his good friend.

“Really?” Ron asked sarcastically. “I wonder why.” He glared at Harry with cold hatred as he spat out his question again. “Where’s your son?”

“Ron, why do you—”

“Where’s your _son_ , Potter?” Ron roared abruptly, causing Lily to jump to a rather impressive height.

“Which one do you want?” Ginny snapped back irately, as her eyes flashed dangerously at her huffing brother. “Which one are you asking for, Ron? We have two, remember?”

Ron glared darkly at her for interrupting him. “James,” he hissed malevolently, as if the very name would somehow burn his tongue off if he mentioned it again.

Harry looked at Ginny quizzically, and she quickly answered, “Upstairs with Albus.”

“Call him down here now,” Ron ordered snappily. “Call him or, so help me, I’ll go and get him, and it won’t be pleasant.”

“Ron, have you been hit by a Bludger?” Ginny asked venomously, but she was cut off by a calming hand on her shoulder.

“It’s alright, Ginny,” Harry interjected mildly, “I’m sure that Ron has a perfectly good explanation for his behaviour, which he’ll tell us about when he’s ready to.” He stepped towards the stairs and called his son’s name in a calm voice.

A door opened upstairs and James rapidly appeared on the stairs, followed closely by Albus. The older boy looked confusedly at his furious uncle before he spotted Rose, and the colour drained from his face instantaneously at the sight of his cousin. He halted on his way down the stairs and gazed at Ron, who glared back at him as if he were a piece of filth, and in less than five seconds James had already understood what was going on.

“Come on, James,” Harry obliviously continued, even as he smiled reassuringly and gestured for him to come towards them, “your Uncle Ron wants to talk to us for a moment.”

James walked down the last few stairs, but his house seemed to blur away around him while his head started to ache horrendously. He walked up to the first armchair he met and stood by it, though it was obvious to everyone in the room that he would’ve much preferred to collapse into it.

“Oh, please, Potter,” Ron snarled in a disdainful voice, “sit down next to Rose, why don’t you.” He gestured in an off-handed towards the larger couch, where Rose seemed to be quivering even more forcefully than before, if that was at all possible for her.

James looked at his father and, when Harry nodded in agreement with his friend, he gulped inaudibly and walked up to the couch, and it was plain to all that he was shaking rather violently as he passed by Ron. He collapsed next to Rose, but neither of the two cousins deigned to spare a glance for the other.

“Send the other two upstairs,” Ron growled darkly, as his voice became terribly serious once again.

“What?” Albus exclaimed crossly. “Rose’s here, so why shouldn’t I hear about what’s going on? I want to hear as well!”

Ron glared at him dangerously but Albus, being completely oblivious as to what was going on, didn’t run away… as he probably should have done.

“Albus, Lily, go upstairs, please,” Harry instructed, while his eyes continued to stare at Ron’s rigid figure without once moving from him.

“Oh, no, Mum, please, can we stay?” Lily asked petulantly.

Ginny looked at Harry, who shook his head firmly. “No,” she sighed, and wearily pointed to the stairs as she added,” go upstairs, now.”

Albus and Lily walked towards the stairs and cast identical glares in the direction of an unaware Ron, who only had eyes for James and Rose at that moment. They walked up the stairs, but, just like Hugo had done bare minutes before them, they stopped on the first landing and held their breaths as they tried to listen in on whatever was going on.

Ginny nearly collapsed into an armchair when her other children finally left the room. “Will you tell us what’s going on now, Ron, or do we have to sit through more of your unsolicited tantrums?” she asked slowly, as if she were talking to a small child.

Ron looked at her and smiled a rather maniacal smile that sent chills running down his sister’s spine. “Of course I will, Ginny,” he replied in a falsely sweet tone, before he added rather dryly, “Rose’s pregnant.”

He said it so bluntly that it took Harry and Ginny quite a lot of time to let the words sink into their brains, but when they finally understood what was going on, Harry’s eyes shifted from Ron to Rose in incredulous disbelief. “What?” he asked dumbly, as he used the exact tone that Ron had unwittingly used when he had overheard Rose and Hermione some time before.

Ginny brought both her hands to her mouth to stifle the horrified gasp that tried to slip out. “What are you talking about?” she asked in a barely audible voice.

“Is it true?” Harry added immediately after his wife.

Ron nodded jerkily in reply. “Of course it is,” he replied with a hiss, before he patted his forehead theatrically and slipped into a horribly casual tone again. “Oh, and I almost forgot to ask… how far are you now, Rose?”

Rose sobbed loudly, but she didn’t dare to raise her head or reply to her father’s query.

“I’m talking to you, Rose Weasley, so answer me when I ask you a question!” Ron hissed angrily, as he walked menacingly towards her and raised his hand into the air in a decidedly threatening manner.

“Three months,” she replied in a choked voice, before he could follow through with his threat.

Ron smiled sickeningly as his hand lowered to his side once more. “Three months, is it? So, let me see…” He counted on his fingers and let his lifeless hands drop again when his gaze darkened still further. “It’s due in June, then, isn’t it?”

Rose sobbed again, and she hid her face in her hands to try and stifle her increasingly-hysterical cries.

“Isn’t it, Rose?” Ron barked harshly, as he gripped her hair to make her look at him.

“Yes, it is,” she screamed desperately, and she freed herself from her father’s grip with a desperate yank. However, some of her hairs were wrenched from her head as she did so, and her next few sobs had a distinct air of hurt to them.

“Ron,” Ginny snapped at him, as she stood up and marched towards her growling brother. “Calm down already.”

“Calm down?” he snorted derisively at her words. “Are you actually asking me to calm down in a time like _this_? I’m not going to be calming down anytime soon, Ginny.”

“Well, um… who’s the father?” Harry asked quietly, but the look he directed at Ron clearly showed that he was afraid of the answer. Half of him wanted to stubbornly ignore the fact that Ron had asked for James and only James to be present, while his other half was trying to make him see the light without the other man’s intervention.

Ron turned towards him, and Harry felt his insides turn to ice at the glare he received from his friend. “Oh,” he said in a deceptively calm tone, “so our little gentleman here hasn’t broken the news to you yet, has he?”

Ginny’s eyes darted to James, who was looking at his uncle as if the man was going to execute him, and she found it hard to resist the urge to collapse into a chair once again. “What news?” she asked, with a rather frightened swallow.

“James is the father,” Ron gritted through his clenched teeth, as he nodded sharply towards his pale-looking nephew.

Harry smiled incredulously and, for just a moment, the fact that Ron had somehow gone mad flashed through his brain. However, when he looked at James’ blanched expression, he knew that his best friend was just telling them a dreadful truth. “What are you talking about?” Harry asked, as the smile morphed into a faint grimace.

“You want a drawing, Harry?” Ron looked at him with narrowed eyes, as if he finally realised that his friend was part of the whole discussion. “What don’t you get, hmm?”

Nothing followed that question except silence… and a loud knock on the door. As the people in the house woke up from their reverie and blinked the pall of dread and horror from their eyes, Hermione’s frantic voice reached the inhabitants of the house from the porch with a startling clarity. “Harry! Ginny!” she called, as she repeatedly bashed her fists against the door.

Harry went to open the door and Hermione stumbled inside, with puffy eyes and wild hair. She looked at Harry, who glanced briefly at her and quickly gestured for her to enter, before she looked at Ron and Ginny, and finally at Rose and James. “Did you tell them already?” she asked Ron, and her voice was far lower than anyone had ever heard it.

Ron nodded brusquely at her question. “Yes, I did,” he replied icily. “Can’t you see their faces?”

“Ron, you must be kidding,” Harry laughed faintly, even as he struggled to stay calm. “James and Rose, they are… they would never do something like that.” He looked towards the couch, but both James and Rose weren’t looking at him. “They know that they are cousins, after all.”

“Oh, of course they know that,” Ron muttered murderously. He took one of the cushions on the couch and threw it at James’ unmoving body, startling him. “What were you thinking, huh? Did you imagine that we would have never discovered you?”

James looked away with a severely darkened face. He didn’t want to give his uncle the satisfaction of hearing his inadequate answer or his quivering voice.

“But you hadn’t discovered us, Dad,” Rose retorted valiantly, as she finally raised her eyes to glare fiercely at Ron’s stony expression.

Ron looked back at her with his eyebrows raised high on his head. “No, Rose, of course not,” he snarled cold-heartedly, “because we wouldn’t have noticed your belly during the Easter holidays, or your baby crying in the night later in the year.”

Rose stood up to bravely face her father as her eyes flashed with barely-suppressed fury. “Oh, sure,” she hissed, as her cheeks gleamed with the tears that she had shed in the past few minutes, “you think that we’ve done this just once, don’t you, Dad?” she asked darkly, and everybody felt like they wouldn’t have liked what was coming next. “Well, I have something to tell you. It’s been two years since we first got together, and you never noticed anything!”

James closed his eyes in defeat as his complexion turned a vague greenish colour. He felt like every word the people around him were saying were cheerfully twisting the proverbial knife that was lodged in his chest.

Ron was even paler than before as his daughter’s audacious words echoed through his mind. “You shut up, Rose Weasley,” he growled threateningly, as he waved a finger in front of her nose, “or by the time I’m done with you, I swear that you won’t ever be going back to Hogwarts again.”

Rose fought back the tears that threatened to spill over her face as she yelled back, “I don’t care!” But she didn’t even manage to finish those three words, since her father’s hand had flown towards her cheek and, at the very last second, swerved to smash into the sofa behind her.

“I told you to shut up,” said Ron, his hand shaking in its embedded position in the couch, “and you’ll only talk when I ask you something.”

Rose lowered her head as she collapsed into the sofa behind her, and her hair falling down to cover her tear-stained face. She brought a hand to her cheek and was glad that her father hadn’t hit her but, when she felt James’ hand sneak over her back and rest near her kidneys, she shook him off with a malicious glare in his direction. “Thanks for the help,” she hissed angrily, and refused to glance towards his tense figure.

“Ron,” Ginny cried frantically, “calm down already!” She was as nervous as he was, but the way she was forced to look at his brother nearly beating his daughter up was making her feel even more stressed than she should’ve been.

Ron turned towards her with a decidedly animalistic glint in his eye. “I’m _not_ going to calm down, Ginny,” he hissed darkly, “and don’t tell me to calm down again, because I don’t want to.”

“And you’re not allowed to talk to me like that!” she shrieked hysterically in response.

Harry walked between them and looked severely at Ginny and Ron before he turned towards James’ and Rose’s unnaturally still forms on the sofa. “Two years ago you two were just fourteen, Rose,” he breathed out softly as astonishment crept into his tone, as if he had just noticed that at that exact moment in time.

James and Rose didn’t move; in fact, they were barely breathing as it was.

“What possessed you two to do such a thing?” he asked again, and though he was calmer than Ron, they understood that he wasn’t any less angrier than his friend was, thanks to the deadly softness of his tone. “I hope you understand that you’ve done something that can’t be fixed with a magical wave of our wands.”

The young couple stubbornly remained silent.

“You’re not going anywhere, Harry,” Ron spoke into the sudden silence, “after all, they think that they are acting fairly.” He looked at Rose and lowered his face to her eye-level. “You’ve been together for two years now, right? So you’ve planned this all out, haven’t you?” He narrowed his eyes and barely prevented himself from spitting into her face. “It must’ve been great fun to see how you could randomly ruin a bunch of people’s lives with your irresponsible actions.”

Rose burst into tears again, and her whole body shook with the severity of her sobs and sniffles.

“Ron,” Hermione murmured from beside his elbow, “leave her alone for five minutes.”

“Hermione, Rose’s going to have a baby, of all things. Don’t ask me to leave her alone until she realises what she’s done,” Ron snapped back harshly.

“Just shut up for a minute, then!” Ginny cried in a high-pitched voice.

Ron glared at her with a steely glint in his eye. “You stay out of this, Ginny.”

“What? How dare you?” Ginny practically yelled at him. “You Apparate into our living room and start to scream and give orders to everybody, and you suddenly think that you’re the only one who has the right to be upset here?”

Ron turned his back to her and closed the brief distance that separated him from Rose, before he grabbed his daughter’s arm in a vice-like grip and roughly yanked her to her feet. He glared at James with a scathing look of hatred and, before anybody could stop him, he pulled his daughter to his chest and they were gone without a further word for the second time that day.

Ginny collapsed on the armchair and hid her face in her hands as she finally gave into her distress.

“Mum,” James whispered, as he finally talked for the first time since his uncle had barged into their house.

Ginny raised her eyes to him and looked coldly at her firstborn. “Go to your bedroom, James,” she ordered in an unnaturally frost tone.

James lowered his eyes and stood up to obey his mother’s order. However, when he looked at his father for some sort of comfort, Harry looked back at him with an expression that was even more grim than Ginny’s had been. James’ eyes shifted onto his aunt, but she seemed even more disturbed than he was, so he cast his pleading glance back to his mother’s slumped form. “Mum, I’m sorry…”

“James, go to your room, now!” Ginny repeated harshly, as she waved her hands in front of her face and kept her eyes lowered stubbornly to the ground.

James gulped and walked away, and his face was akin to the one of a boy that had just been informed of his parent’s abandonment of him, because they didn’t love him anymore. He climbed up the stairs and passed by his shocked siblings without even seeing them, before he shuffled tiredly to his room and stumbled lifelessly inside.

When Harry, Ginny and Hermione heard the door of his room close with a muted thud, they finally let out the breath that they didn’t know they were holding. Hermione let even out a sob and collapsed on one of the chairs that were around the beautiful ebony table near the chimney as she brought her hands to her face and started to weep freely into them.

Harry looked at her but his feet didn’t move; instead, he simply shook his head and turned away with a troubled look on his face. Ginny, on the contrary, stood up and walked towards her, before she sat down on the table opposite to her and placed a comforting hand on Hermione’s arm. At the warm gesture, Hermione raised her eyes and looked at her sister-in-law, while Ginny attempted to give a weary smile to her.

Hermione sobbed and smiled wanly back at the same time, before Ginny’s hands went to hers and she squeezed them in her own trembling palms.

“What are we going to do now?” Hermione asked through her relentless sniffling.

“I don’t know,” Ginny replied tiredly, though she still made a valiant effort to smile softly at her friend, “but if you’re asking me then I guess it isn’t a good sign, is it?”

Hermione let out a soft laugh choked with sorrow at the other woman’s words. “No, I guess not,” she answered, and the smile that remained on her face was threatening to collapse when her voice hitched on the last word.

Ginny sighed as a memory assaulted her from the depths of her mind. The last time she had held Hermione’s hands like that was around seventeen years before. Ginny remembered it well, since she had just discovered that she had been pregnant with Albus, and she clearly remembered that it had been a warm June morning when she had broken the news to Hermione and Ron. They had seemed happy to hear that she was already expecting her second child while James was still a baby, and when Hermione had spilled her tea all over the table, Ginny had thought that it was just out of excitement, and nothing more.

However, when she had gotten back home that evening, she was more than surprised to find Hermione banging at her door a couple of minutes later with tears streaming down from her puffy eyes and rolling over her wet cheeks. Ginny remembered holding her hands as Hermione confessed that she and Ron had been trying to have a baby for the past couple of years and that she simply didn’t seem able to get pregnant, no matter what she tried. Ginny remembered her fragile tone of voice as Hermione asked if she thought that there was something wrong with her, and she remembered Hermione pleading with her when she wondered about what she could have done to deserve such a fate, while she had simply replied that she didn’t know the answer to her question at all.

Two days later, she would show up to Hermione and Ron’s door with an old book that had been property of her mother and of the mother of her mother before her to her chest, and she would assure her friend that the book had been in her family for many generations now. Ginny remembered telling Hermione that she didn’t believe in the odd things that were scattered throughout it, but that they could try out the ancient rite of fertility at page twelve and see whether that worked or not.

Ginny remembered running around with Hermione in the quarry behind the Burrow two days later, without a single shred of clothing to preserve their modesty from the heavens above, and she remembered dancing in a circle with her under the full moon and swimming in the pond at midnight. However, what Ginny remembered the most was that, about a month later, Hermione was crying again in her living room, as her tears were broken up by hugs and kisses. Ginny could still clearly remember Hermione’s voice when she told her that she was pregnant with Rose, and she remembered Ron’s face while he hugged her and thanked her over and over again.

“I think I’m going home,” Hermione mumbled as she cut through Ginny’s reminiscing and wiped away at her tears.

Ginny looked at her dazedly, as if she had just woken up from a daydream, and she nodded in reply.

Hermione nodded back shakily as she stood up, but she staggered a little and nearly collapsed into the chair behind her again.

“Are you sure you can Apparate in your state, Hermione?” Harry asked concernedly, as he walked over to her side and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You don’t seem exactly well.”

Hermione took a deep breath and shook off Harry with a shrug of her shoulders. “I can manage, thank you, Harry,” she replied hollowly. She closed her eyes and concentrated on her house, but when she opened her eyes again, she saw that she hadn’t managed to Apparate. In fact, nothing at all had happened, it seemed, because Harry and Ginny were looking back at her with a concerned expression on their faces instead.

“Use the Floo,” Harry suggested softly, as he extended a small jar towards her.

Hermione sighed and nodded resignedly, before she walked slowly towards the fireplace and vanished in a burst of green flames.


	7. Relationship Breakdowns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I shouldn't say this, but I hate this chapter. Anything good you can find in here it's all my beta's skills to take my terrible scenes and make them good. I promise more stuff will happen in the upcoming chapters! Don't give up on this story just yet!

***

Harry took a deep breath and knocked on James’ bedroom door, before he stepped back and waited for his son to open it up. He had decided to talk to him alone, without Ginny or Ron or anybody else’s presence, and he wanted to listen very carefully to what he had to say. He was still sure that there was a simple and rational explanation for what had happened so far, and he was determined to get to the bottom of it.

The tell-tale noises from the other side of the door told Harry that James had jumped down the bed where he had probably been lying upon and was now walking towards the door. When the boy opened it and found his father standing in the corridor, his expression darkened slightly as he moved back and allowed Harry to enter his bedroom.

Harry walked in and, once he was inside, James closed the door behind their backs and leaned against it wearily. “What do you want, Dad?” he asked, and though he tried to keep his voice flat, it still managed to waver a little.

Harry turned to look at him and folded his arms across his chest as he levelled a piercing gaze at his son. “I want to talk,” he replied firmly.

James looked away from him and snorted derisively at his father’s admission. “What do you want to talk about? I think that Uncle Ron had already said quite a lot about all this, hadn’t he?” he hissed angrily.

Harry continued to look at him as he shook his head in a slightly reprieving manner. “Don’t you dare blame your uncle for his reaction,” he snapped back, “he had every right to act that way.”

“He nearly hit Rose, though,” James retorted heatedly, as he narrowed his eyes furiously at Harry’s unrelenting form.

Harry took a deep breath and let it out in a weary sigh. “James, maybe you don’t understand the gravity of yours and Rose’s situation,” he enunciated slowly, as if he thought that his son was simply oblivious to his faults, “even if we don’t mention the fact that she’s your cousin; you two are going to have a baby when you’re still  _teenagers_ .”

James looked away as his face began darkening even more. He knew perfectly well about the brevity of the situation he was in, but what could his father possibly want from him now? Did Harry want James to punish himself for his mistakes and fall to his knees in repentance? “I know that already,” the boy growled icily.

“Well, does Rose’s pregnancy look like it’s something good to you, then? Does your uncle have no right to act that way to your cousin? She is his daughter, after all,” he exclaimed bitterly.

James’ eyes flitted back at his father as he gritted his teeth angrily. “And what do you suggest, Dad?” he bit back coldly. “Do you want to punish me for getting Rose pregnant or kick me out of your house for all this?” He shook his head bitterly and hissed under his breath, “Whatever it is, I don’t care anymore.” He closed his hands and balled them into fists. “You can do whatever you want to me, so long as you don’t do anything to Rose.”

Harry shook his head and stared at the ground with both sadness and anger swirling behind his eyes. “You think it’s that easy, don’t you?” he snapped irately. “Do you really think that this is just one of those things that you do, which then result in your mother and I punishing you for a couple of days? You think that, later on, everything will be like it was before, don’t you?” He looked at James and his eyes burned with the intensity of his gaze. “It’s not like that this time, James.”

The chastised boy bit his bottom lip and felt his nails dig further into his abused palms. “You’re right, Dad; we did make a mistake, and we cannot go back anymore. Now, if that’s all you’ve got to say to me, then what’s the point behind you telling me all those things?” he asked coldly.

“James, you’re going to be a father,” snapped Harry heatedly.

“And what do you want me to tell you, Dad?” James barked harshly. “I don’t know what you want from me right now.”

Harry flinched at his son’s words, and was clearly taken aback by the helplessness seeping through them. He didn’t know what he wanted from him as well, if he had to be frank with himself. It was true that he was extremely angry with him, but he knew perfectly well that there was no way to go back to the state of things before. Even if Ron forced Rose to have an abortion – which had seemed to be a solution that his brother-in-law might have suggested the night before – it wouldn’t have made their situation any less terrible than if the pregnancy hadn’t happened at all. They had been together in an incestuous relationship and nothing would ever change that. However, Harry couldn’t have left his son hanging without an answer, because that was like agreeing with him and admitting that there was nothing left to do, which meant that there would be no need to rub salt into the gaping wound left by this fiasco. “I just want you to understand exactly how terrible the consequences to your actions have been,” he eventually replied.

“I know, Dad. You don’t need to worry; seriously, I know already,” James muttered sulkily. “But what do you want me to say to that? Do you want me to say that, if I could go back, I would have never loved Rose the way I loved her?” his voice trailed away at the second question, as if he were almost talking to himself at that point. “Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.” He sighed forlornly as his gaze softened ever so slightly. “She’s everything to me, and I was just too stupid to notice that, until the moment I lost her.”

Harry tilted his head and, when he finally took in his son’s words, he nearly had an aneurysm at his son’s confession. “What do you mean?” he asked, as he tried and failed to keep his voice calm.

“We broke up,” he explained mournfully, “when she told me that she was pregnant, we quarrelled and then… I left her.”

“Why?” Harry questioned uneasily. It was the first time that James had talked with him about such personal matters and it was strange for Harry, because he was only used to hearing about discourses regarding Quidditch and broomsticks from his sport-obsessed son. Actually, Harry had never suspected that his first son had a love life at all, to the point where he didn’t even believe that James would ever be interested in anyone until he was a middle-aged wizard like his Uncle Charlie. Furthermore, he was sure that, if James was with someone, he would have never talked to him about it, because he was far too reserved for that sort of emotional confession. Now he knew that his discretion had been caused by other motivations.

“Because I asked her to terminate the pregnancy and she refused,” he replied stiffly. He finally shifted his gaze back at his father as a tortured expression crept onto his face. “Don’t you ever think that we didn’t know about the consequences of our relationship. Although we wouldn’t have kept it a secret for all these years, we knew that we’d have to tell you one day and, somehow, get you all to accept us for the people that we are.”

Harry arched an eyebrow at his serious statement. “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said since yesterday afternoon,” he murmured thoughtfully, “well, at the very least, it seems like you know that you did something wrong.”

James snorted and shook his head dismissively. “Yeah, if that’s what you want to believe,” he replied simply.

Harry mentally rolled his eyes as he fought the urge to slap James for his impudence and his face hardened as a thought solidified in his mind. “You are not allowed out of this room until the day you are meant to go back to Hogwarts,” Harry stated, and he watched as something changed in his son’s eyes.

James stared darkly at him as his lips turned faintly downwards. “I want to see Rose, though,” he snapped briskly.

Harry shook his head and frowned at his wayward son. “Consider yourself lucky if your Uncle Ron doesn’t kick her out of his house,” he replied sharply, “and I don’t think that, even if I let you see her, Uncle Ron would ever agree to allow you two to ever meet again.”

James glared at his father through narrowed eyes. “You can’t force us apart,” he hissed furiously.

Harry turned towards the door with a weary sigh and pushed it open, before he cast his son a hard glance over his shoulder. “We can and we will, James,” he answered, and it was clear that he would accept no compromise on his conditions. “At least, until we have decided what to do with you and Rose.” He strode out and slammed the door at his back as the words faded in the air, before the sound of the lock catching twice replaced the finality of Harry’s statement. However, it was only when his steps had faded away on the stairs that James let out a frustrated cry and, after he’d grasped the first thing he found, he sent the unfortunate item, a rather heavy book, against the innocent wall.

Why was he so angry? He didn’t really know how to answer that. When Rose had told him that she was pregnant, he had left her and spent the days afterwards making himself believe that he didn’t love her anymore, and that he could live perfectly well without her because she had always been just his toy, and nothing more… but that had all been a big fat lie. Now that he had lost her, James suddenly understood that she was everything to him and, for a moment, the possibility that they might take her away from him forever cut off the air supply to his lungs and nearly made him choke.

As James’ tumultuous thoughts threatened to swallow him whole, he closed his fists and punched the wardrobe with a furious yell. He didn’t care if his father forbade him from seeing her; all he knew was that he had to meet her one last time and clarify things with her, or even ask her to forgive him, before it was too late for either of them. They could just as well kill him for breaking those rules, because he didn’t care about them anymore. If he didn’t see her again, he might as well be dead anyway.

***

Ron put his hands on the edges of the sink and arched his back as he inhaled deeply and let out a noisy breath. Were the events that had happened the day before just a dream… or were they reality? However, the only thing that answered him was his stomach, which rumbled so loudly that it reminded him of the fact that he hadn’t had any dinner the day before, and since only something as upsetting as discovering that his daughter was pregnant with her cousin’s child would have made him skip dinner, it meant that the day before had all been a horrible, horrible reality.

He raised his eyes and looked at his reflection in the mirror, but he found it hard to recognise the broken man that was staring back into his eyes. The man before him was pale, with his eyes framed with dark circles and his sclera almost red for the snatches of sleep that hadn’t been enough to recuperate him that night. His hair looked very much like that of Harry’s careless style, for it was as if he had never combed it, and were it not for the fact that he knew he was staring in a normal mirror, he might’ve thought that such an appearance was only possible in the realms of fairy-tales.

Ron turned on the tap and cocked his hands under the frozen water so that he could splash it all over his pallid face in an attempt to bring colour and life to it once more. He felt it slide down his cheeks and neck, and he made no move to wipe the icy liquid off himself, even when some drops slipped under his pyjamas and sent chills dancing across his skin. He would have taken a shower if his stomach wasn’t threatening to tear down his body with all its protests, and the mere act of wetting his face was still enough to trigger another chorus of grumbles from his stomach’s empty depths. Ron sunk his head into the nearby towel and brushed forcefully at the water on his face before, a minute later, he walked out of the bathroom and headed straight into his bedroom.

Hermione had been there when he had gotten up, but now she was gone from the room. Ron sat down on her side of the bed and touched the sheets, which were still warm with her body heat, before he closed his eyes and inhaled sharply to breathe in her sweet scent, which still lingered amongst the blankets. He stood up and padded out of the bedroom and, as soon as he had clambered down the stairs, he could hear the familiar noises of plates and frying pans as well as smell the bacon and toast wafting from the kitchen’s cosy confines.

He crossed the living room with measured steps that were not too quick and not too slow, before he pushed the door of the kitchen open. Hermione was there, as he had suspected, with her curly hair combed into a loose ponytail on her head and with her thin body wrapped in a peach dressing gown as she fried the bacon, toasted the bread, cooked the eggs and brewed the tea… all at the same time.

Ron’s first impulse was to hurry to her side, move away her bushy hair from her neck, kiss her under her ear in a special place that he’d discovered was where she was most sensitive and maybe even throw her on the counter before Hugo came down to claim his breakfast. Instead, he looked away from her and his eyes wandered across the kitchen as they casually took in the details of the room. The table was prepared for three people, but there was a tray in the place that was usually Rose’s, with a glass of milk and some buttered toast already lying neatly on a plate.

Ron swallowed and, after he’d strode quickly towards the table, he sat down on his chair and stared at Hermione’s back. “Good morning,” he uttered, a little more stiffly than he had intended.

Hermione turned to look at him and, though her face remained serious, her eyes shone merrily for a second. “Good morning, Ron,” she murmured back, and turned towards the preparations for breakfast once again.

Ron took a deep breath and held it inside of him as he thought over what he was planning to do next. He didn’t want to do what he was about to do, because that would have surely caused a quarrel to arise between himself and Hermione, but he was the head of the family and he wanted to have everything under control in this situation. “What are you doing?” he asked just a little too casually for his wife’s liking.

“Getting the breakfast ready,” she answered slowly, as if she knew what his intentions were and was loathing the thought of confirming her suspicions.

“I can see that much for myself,” Ron replied huffily, “but what’s this?” He nodded curtly towards the tray sitting beside him and folded his arms across his chest.

Hermione inhaled abruptly and her eyes momentarily flashed with worry before they went curiously empty. “It’s Rose’s breakfast,” she mentioned flatly, “since she’s not allowed out of her room, I thought I’d bring it to her.”

Ron nodded darkly at his wife’s words as he lowered his eyes and opened his mouth to say something but, before he could utter a word, Hermione’s voice cut in.

“Don’t,” she whispered gravely.

Ron looked back at her and took a deep breath. “You don’t even—”

“I do,” she told him quietly. “She didn’t have dinner last night, Ron. She needs to eat.” Hermione turned her back to him and extinguished the fire under the frying pan, which was starting to ignite the bacon and threatened to burn them to a few blackened crisps. “She  _is_ pregnant, you know,” she added in a whisper.

Ron stared at her, at a loss of words, as she turned around once again to serve him with the bacon she’d spent the morning making. Her forehead was creased in a slight frown of concentration as she pushed the bacon to the side of his plate and made some room for the scrambled eggs that were still on the gas cooker. However, before she could put down her pan, Ron stretched his hand out and stilled Hermione’s wrist with a gentle touch. He brushed his thumb over her smooth skin and took a deep breath as he stared at her hand, before he exhaled softly and shook his head a little helplessly. “I just feel so angry, Hermione,” he murmured wearily.

Hermione sighed sadly at his words. “I know exactly how you feel, Ron,” she confessed sorrowfully, “and I’m angry too, but we can’t confine her in her bedroom and let her die of hunger, no matter how angry or vengeful we feel.”

Ron looked askance at her, before looking away again and shaking his head. “We are her parents, Hermione,” he stated simplistically, “we can do anything to her.” He darkened and crossed his arms as he thought to himself, before he nodded his head sharply at his wife. “Okay, fine; you can bring her breakfast, but there’s no way that you’re asking me to do it.”

Hermione brushed Ron’s hand off and placed the frying pan back on the table, before she leaned her palms against the counter and inadvertently showed him her back. “I wasn’t going to,” she replied softly, though her tone was a little rueful, “after all, I want to see her.”

Ron considered her words for a moment, before he nodded stiffly and pursed his lips once more. He cut his bacon and brought it to his mouth, but he abruptly realized that he wasn’t hungry anymore, so he put it back onto the plate and set his cutlery down on the table. When he stood up from his seat, Hermione turned to look at him with a concerned expression over her face, but she didn’t say anything as he turned his back on her and walked away, only to disappear out of the kitchen and head to Merlin knew where.

***

When Molly’s eyelids fluttered open, the first thing she saw was Arthur’s worried face, which looked kindly down at his wife as he bended over her and his palms patted gently at her wrists. “Are you alright, Molly?” he asked urgently, though his actions were anything but urgent.

Molly looked around at her surroundings for a bit before she began to think about her answer. What had happened to her? She had gotten up that morning and, like every morning, she had prepared some breakfast for her and Arthur to eat. Then she had started to cook and bake for the Christmas party that was coming up in two days when Ginny and Harry’s owl had arrived with a letter—

Oh! The letter! It was terrible, terrible news indeed! It was so terrible that, just before she fainted to the ground, Molly Weasley had firmly believed that, for just a split second, it was all just a terrible nightmare that brought some of her worst fears to life. However, as soon as she had woken up and recalled everything before her fainting spell, she understood that it wasn’t a dreadful fantasy at all; on the contrary, it was the horrible truth that she had to face. So, although fainting had seemed the best thing to do at the moment, she resisted the overwhelming urge to do it again and breathed deeply in instead.

“Oh, Arthur,” she mumbled feebly, “did you read the letter?” She raised the trembling hand that held the missive Ginny had sent her, and her fingers were so tightly clenched around it that her knuckles were ghostly white from the extreme pressure she was putting them under.

Arthur Weasley nodded solemnly in reply. His face was still twisted with worry, but half of his concern was for his wife, who hadn’t reacted this badly to any sort of news since the day Hugo had caught the Muggle flu when he was three and his other grandparents had insisted on bringing him to a Muggle hospital, rather than St Mungo’s, for treatment. “I read it, Molly,” Arthur added slowly.

Molly sat up with a great effort, and Arthur still had to help her upright, despite her protests. “I told you that they were too close, didn’t I?” she asked urgently. “I wrote to Ginny and Ron those letters, but why on Earth didn’t I send them at all?”

Arthur sighed tiredly and shook his head at his wife’s frantic words. “Molly, nobody could have ever imagined that they would have gone so far… not even you,” he murmured comfortingly, in an attempt to calm the frazzled woman down.

Molly let out a groan as her head slumped forward. “Oh, Arthur, they grew up under this roof like siblings! What have we ever done wrong to foster their love into a romantic one?” she whispered brokenly.

“Nothing, Molly,” he reassured her gently, “I believe we raised them like all of our other grandchildren, so we can’t blame ourselves for what has happened so far.” Arthur sighed wearily and sat down next to Molly as she sat up straighter in her armchair.

“Then, what’s happened to Rose and James?” Molly asked with a greatly discouraged tone.

Arthur looked at her from behind his spectacles and smiled sadly at his wife’s palpable concern. “I don’t know, Molly… I wish I did, but I really don’t know.”

Molly closed her weary eyes for a moment as she attempted to understand what was going on in her life. Never, since the days of Voldemort, had she felt so much worry for one of her family members, and she could only imagine what had been Ron’s reaction to the news. If she knew anything about his point of view on matters like his children’s relationships, she was sure that his response would be more violent and extreme than hers. “I want to lie down a little, Arthur,” Molly mumbled light-headedly, as she blinked blearily and glanced towards her husband.

Arthur looked at her in return as his blue eyes widened with concern. “You want me to bring you something, Molly? Do you want a cup of tea, perhaps?”

Molly shook her head, and her white curls waved softly around her equally white face. “No, Arthur, I just need to get some rest.” She stood up shakily as she gripped the armrest with both her hands for support, and staggered a little while she took some faltering steps towards the stairs.

“Molly, do you want me to help you with climbing those stairs?”

“No, thank you,” she replied softly, without bothering to turn around and look at Arthur. She climbed up the stairs a step at a time with such a slow pace that the ticking hand of the Grandfather Clock nearby seemed to go even faster than her sluggish movements.

The railing, the stairs, the carpet, the door, the bed, the pillows, the drawer, the socks box and the letters… everything was real and dreamlike at the same time, and she couldn’t tell what was fact and what was fiction anymore. Later that day, Molly wouldn’t be able to remember if she took the letters she hid in the socks box at the bottom of her drawer or if she’d read them at all, but for the moment she knew that she did, and that was enough for her.

They were love letters that were all signed with the same name, William Prewett, and all addressed to the same person, Molly Prewett. They told their story in cursive letters and flowery language; theirs was a tale of love and passion and obsession that lasted less than a couple of years, and it was all brought to a sudden end by the death of her beloved William. They were first cousins, just like Molly’s suffering grandchildren were and they, unlike their unfortunate descendants, were meant to marry, because at that time the Wizarding families wanted to keep marriages in their families to retain their Pureblood status. They were in love and nobody could deny them their happiness, so a contract was made even before they were of an age to marry, and Molly couldn’t recall being happier than when she realized that everything was going to come true for her and the love of her life.

…But, just two days before Molly’s sixteenth birthday, William had got incurably sick and died. At that moment, all the world had turned upside down for the fifteen-year-old girl that was too in love to believe that she would ever fall for someone else, and it was a miracle that had brought her Arthur to soothe the gaping void that had been left in her heart.

Molly and Rose, William and James. The more she thought of them, the more their outlines blurred, and Molly couldn’t distinguish between the past and the present, or what had happened and what was happening, anymore. All she could have been sure of was that she couldn’t have ignored the dreadful foreboding that was growing in her heart; history always repeated itself, and fate was a cruel being that toyed with the humans at its disposal.

***

Victoire’s jaw dropped as she looked at her aunt without being able to tell if she had heard right or if she had just imagined things, but Hermione seemed far too serious for this to be a figment of her imagination, and Victoire’s hopeful doubts dissolved as quickly as they had appeared. “Aunt Hermione, what are you talking about?” she asked. Her son, Remus, gripped her silvery hair and pulled at it in a pathetic attempt at attracting his mother’s attention, but Victoire only hushed him distractedly in reply and turned her widened eyes to the solemn woman opposite her. “I mean, Rose is not the kind of girl that would get pregnant, and to be with James as well… are you quite sure of all this?”

Hermione placed a pot of tea on the table and looked at Victoire with the same harsh and despondent expression that she had been wearing for the last few days. “Yes, we are sure,” she replied dully, “your uncle forced her to do a pregnancy test after we punished her, and it came back positive.”

Victoire swallowed thickly at the news. “And what about James?”

Hermione shrugged her shoulders slightly, and it had so little life to it that the silver-haired woman wondered, for just a brief moment, if the person opposite her was simply just a wooden doll instead. “They confessed to their relationship; both of them did,” she muttered, and added flatly, “he is the father.”

Victoire raised her eyebrows incredulously. “You’re not taking it very well, are you?” she dared to ask.

Hermione sat across from her and burrowed her face into her clammy palms. “No, we aren’t. Nobody would be, in our situation,” she replied hollowly, and the despair in her voice was so palpable that the room was almost crushed by her overwhelming depression.

Victoire bit her bottom lip uneasily and hazarded at another question. “Can I see Rose?”

Hermione smiled softly, though it was clear that it pained her to show any sort of positive emotion, and shook her head in response. “She’s not allowed out of her bedroom, and nobody is permitted inside.”

“Who says?”

“Her father and I do.”

Victoire looked away. “And James? Can I see him, at least?”

“I don’t think he’s allowed out of his room as well, but I haven’t talked to Aunt Ginny and Uncle Harry since the day Rose broke the news with us, so I’m not too sure…” she mumbled slowly.

Remus patted his mother’s cheek a little roughly and called out to his mummy insistently, but Victoire still didn’t pay him any attention. Instead, she just moved her face away and told her son to be quiet, before she returned her attention to Hermione. “And what are you planning to do about all this then?” she asked evenly, though the conflicted expression on her face was anything but level.

Hermione shrugged again. “We don’t know what we’re going to do yet,” she answered uncertainly, “for now, we’ve just decided to keep them locked in their own rooms, but we don’t know what we’ll do about the situation when they have to go back to Hogwarts or once the baby is born.” She poured some tea into a cup and offered it to Victoire, though she left her own curiously empty.

“Thanks,” Victoire murmured appreciatively, as she took it and sipped at the hot beverage.

Hermione smiled, before she looked at Remus, who was quietly sulking next to his mother. “I think that Rose wants it to be a girl,” she said suddenly, “we haven’t talked about it yet, but I heard her speaking to the baby.” Hermione sighed quietly as the memory flooded her mind, and shook her head slightly to shoo it away. “She addressed it as a girl several times.”

Victoire furrowed her brow at the thought. “What are you going to do when you let them out?”

“I don’t know,” whispered Hermione. “I just… I don’t know anymore…”

Victoire inhaled deeply as her eyes glazed over with sorrow and pity. “I remember studying the lives of Merlin and Morgan at school…”

“I studied that too,” Hermione responded quietly, “but Morgan le Fay and King Arthur weren’t cousins, you know.”

Victoire shook her head and smiled slightly at her frazzled aunt. “They were half-siblings, and yet they had a child,” she answered gently.

“You tell Uncle Ron that, Victoire,” Hermione huffed, even as she snorted softly. “Nobody here wants to listen to anything at all that will somehow allow us to forgive Rose and James; no, not even  _I_ want to hear about this anymore.” She sighed again and gazed despondently at her niece. “No, I don’t want to know anymore.” She stood up and set her cup, which was still empty and clean, onto the table-top. “You’d better go, Victoire.”

Victoire looked at her aunt with her beautiful eyes opened wide. “Teddy and I have your Christmas presents at home,” she murmured, and she looked as if she would be more than eager to get them if Hermione so much as gave her permission to do so.

“There are so many Christmases that still have to come,” she replied instead, “and you’ll surely find the right time for those presents to be given, sooner or later.”

“But this Christmas won’t be the same without half of the family,” Victoire muttered glumly.

“Nothing is the same anymore,” Hermione whispered forlornly, “you really better go now, Victoire. There’s nothing I’ve got to say anymore…”

Victoire stood up as she hugged Remus warmly, before she whispered to him to say goodbye to his aunt, which he did with a childish innocence that made Hermione smile as she waved her hand at the little boy. Without another word, Victoire and Remus walked out of the door and into the garden as they headed back to their house, and the silver-haired woman was more than keen to talk to Teddy and see his face when he learnt about Rose


	8. A Tale of Love...

***

James pocketed his wand and the box he had stared at for the past few hours before he closed his eyes. It wasn’t the first time that he’d Apparated since he had gotten his license some time ago, but it was the first time that he had felt so troubled before he’d attempted an Apparition. He remembered how his father had told him that he’d hated Apparating and that he would have never wanted to do it if he had a choice, not even if it was the less dramatic side-along Apparition. James didn’t really like to Apparate as well, but he didn’t know any other way to get where he wanted to right now.

His eyelids almost hurt him as he squeezed his eyes even tighter in the skull and thought forcefully of the place that he wanted to go. There were a bed, a desk covered in books, a poster of Morgan le Fay on the wall, a wardrobe full of clothes and underwear that he knew very well and secret boxes in the drawers that were full of his letters and presents. He knew that place by heart; after all he had Apparated there a few times since he was of age, and it had always been in the middle of the night, with an excitement that always welled up in him at the thought that he was going to meet the young lady that was constantly in his dreams.

James sighed at the fond memories that refused to leave his mind. She was constantly in his dreams and she had been everything to him, yet he had still had the nerve to tell her that he didn’t love her. How could he do such a thing to her? If he had a Time Turner handy, he would’ve went back to that moment in his life and slapped himself silly for his stupidity.

The dark haired boy closed his fists and dug his nails into his palms. _Rose’s bedroom_ , he said in his mind, _I need to go to Rose’s bedroom._ He had considered the fact that his uncle might have cast spells around her bedroom to prevent him from Apparating into her room, but he didn’t care about that at all. If worst came to worst and the room was magically blockaded like that, he would have simply bumped back into his room without any great damage to his person. The next time, he would Apparate into the garden under the cover of night and made his way to her bedroom with his broomstick, or by climbing up the tree that they had used countless times before to secretly sneak out of the house on some summer nights, when the sky outside was too beautiful to be seen from the inside or ignored. No matter what, he would make sure that he got to Rose and talked to her.

He started to feel the typical sensations caused by an Apparition as his mind and body were both sucked into the force of the spell and an invisible force seemed to yank determinedly at his unmoving form. Within seconds, his feet had left the ground and his body was banged in thousands of directions before he was soon hurtling away from his own bedroom.

On the other side of the city, there was a subtle ‘pop’ and a few quick steps and, before James could even regain enough energy to open his eyes and see where he was, the boy felt something sharp dig mercilessly into his chest.

“What are you doing here?” Rose’s voice was strange; it was like she was trying to be aggressive but, at the same time, it seemed like she wasn’t able to hide the desire that was burning her alive from the inside. When James finally managed to fling his eyes open, he was almost able to see that desire on her cheeks and in her shining eyes – she seemed like she was on fire, but he wasn’t quite sure that what he saw was from the happiness that came from seeing him again.

James’ lips parted as he took in a soft breath, but suddenly his throat became very dry and all the words that he had planned to say refused to exit his mouth. What should he have said to her, now that the moment of their reunion had come? There were thousands of things that he desperately wanted to tell her, but he simply didn’t know where he was supposed to start.

“James, what are you doing here?” she repeated hoarsely and, though her voice quivered a little more as she spoke, her wand poked into him just a little bit harder.

“I needed to see you, Rose,” he replied quickly, even as he began to back away from her insistent shoves. “Please, don’t send me away.”

Rose cocked her neck and her curly, red hair half-covered her face, but as it did so, James was startled by what little he could see of her visage. She was whiter than her usual pale self, she seemed more tired than she had been at school, her eyes seemed bigger and far too bright on her face and her freckles were standing out on her pasty skin like marred blood stains on fresh snow.

“You can’t stay here, James,” she uttered simply in response. “You can’t stay here; you have to go.”

“Is it because you don’t want me here, or is it because your father doesn’t want me here?” he asked sternly as he stared into her gleaming eyes.

Rose’s expression grew harder at his query. “If I was scared of my father, do you think I would’ve said all those things in front of him when I was at your house two days ago?” she bit back sharply.

James felt his heart ache at the closed expression on the other’s face. “Please, Rose, don’t send me away… I need to talk to you,” he almost begged, despite the fact that James had never begged her to do anything for him before.

Rose swallowed thickly at his plea. “There were plenty of times when you could’ve talked to me at Hogwarts, but you never even came this close to me,” she hissed, holding her thumb and index finger closely in the air.

James’ face turned green and paled at her accusation and, as he closed his eyes for a moment, Rose briefly thought that he was going to be sick in her room. “I was a complete idiot, is that what you wanted to hear from me?” he choked out, and his voice trembled as she has never heard it do before. “I was wrong, Rose… I was horribly wrong.” He opened his eyes again and looked at her with a pleading gaze that reflected the heartache in his abused heart.

Rose’s pupils abruptly dilated as her eyes were flung wide open and she stared back at him with mixed astonishment and nervousness. However, before the silence could overwhelm them for too long, she shook her head softly and her lips trembled with a weak tone. “James, no…”

James took a step towards her as his mouth parted once more. “I said that I didn’t love you,” he continued sadly, even as Rose shook her head in horror, “I said that you were just a toy for me and that I wanted to be with you because you were beautiful and because it was dangerous.” He took another step towards her and, this time, Rose stepped back, and though her wand still pointed to his chest, her grip was looser than it was before, since his words were making her resolve waver. “I was lying, Rose,” he went on pleadingly, “I loved you and I love you still. That’s why I want to be with you for every moment of my life, that’s why—”

“No!” she cut him off with an emotional refusal, even as she let her wand fall from her hands and brought them up to her face in a futile attempt to cover the tears that were mercilessly streaming down her cheeks. “No! You don’t understand, it’s too late now…”

“Rose, I don’t want you to forgive me if you can’t; I just want you to know that I love you, even if you can’t love me back” he murmured through the sound of her pattering tears, “I know that I was horrible with you, but every time I said those hurtful things to you, I was hurting myself even more than you could possibly imagine.”

Rose finally melted into unrestrained sobs as her knees failed her and she lost all strength in her limbs, but she never touched the floor because James was already there to hug her before she could even start to slide down. He caressed her hair and rocked her tenderly back and forth as he murmured sweet nothings close to her ear, but Rose never stopped once in her hysterical crying fit.

James softly brushed away a lock of crimson hair from her watery eyes and looked deeply into them. “Will you still be able to, perhaps not now or in the foreseeable future… well, could you consider my words and maybe forgive me one day?” he asked gently.

Rose returned his fervent gaze with eyes that shone brightly with tears. She tried to answer him but, before she could open her mouth, he placed a finger on her lips and shushed her. “Wait; before you send me away or tell me to leave, can I… can I touch…”  His left hand slid down from her back and hovered a few inches from her stomach. “Can I touch it?” he asked softly, as his eyes drifted to her rounding belly as well.

Rose’s felt an electric shock emit from her chest and shoot through every limb of her body at James’ words, because they couldn’t possibly be real. This very situation had been her dream for a month or so before, but now it was turning into a nightmare that was worse than the one that she had the afternoon after they broke up. James was torturing her without even knowing it, and she didn’t know whether she was supposed to scream at him for being so very late or thank him for finally fulfilling something she had secretly wanted for so long.

She placed a hand on his trembling one and guided it towards her rounded stomach, and she felt James holding his breath as he cupped her vaguely swollen belly on the stretched skin near her navel and closed his eyes almost reverently at the warmth that seeped through her body. They stood like that forever, locked in their intimate pose, and they were sure that not even Ron, if he discovered them at that moment, would have had the nerve to interrupt them then.

Finally, after an eternity that Rose wish could’ve lasted forever, James opened his eyes once again and looked down at his cousin’s watery eyes. “If it’s a boy, can you call him—”

“No, James, please stop it!” she raised her voice a little, but it was still low for her sleeping parents to barely miss hearing her. She collapsed on the bed and hid her face in her hands as she started to sob uncontrollably.

James’ eyes widened as she resumed her hysterical sobbing. “Rose, I’m sorry, what did I—”

“You don’t understand,” she sobbed brokenly, “it’s too late. It’s too late for everything.”

He sat near her on her bed and encircled her shoulders with one of his warm arms as he pushed her thin and trembling body towards his own. He caressed her soothingly and hushed her sweetly as he did so, before he tentatively attempted to get her to confide in him. “Why is it too late?” he asked gently, before he added, “there are still six months to go and I’m with you now, so if you—”

“What would you do, huh?” she cut him off despairingly, even as she sniffled noisily. “What would you do for me when we’re already so doomed? What _can_ we do in our situation, James?”

James kissed away her salty tears and smiled softly in response. “We can run away together, you know,” he whispered, “it’ll be just the two of us, and we won’t need to worry about anyone else. We can go to King’s Cross and take the first Muggle train for any city we want, and they’ll never find us if we move far enough from them.”

Rose gripped his arm in an iron grip and pressed her curly head onto his chest. “Our fathers are Aurors; if they want to find us, they’ll turn England upside down to do so, and they’d never stop until we’re in their clutches again,” she murmured wretchedly.

“Then we’ll go to that Muggle place where there are those flying things and take one for Italy or Spain or America, or anywhere but here,” he replied urgently, “I dare my father to find us in another continent.”

“Stop it, James,” she mumbled sadly, “don’t joke with me about this.”

“I’m not joking, Rose.” He gently lifted her chin so that her face was level with his, before he kissed her on her lips with a softly and delicate manner that Rose answered to in kind.

“Why are you here, James?” she asked against his lips. “Why did you come here tonight?”

“It’s Christmas night, and I didn’t want to spend Christmas without you,” he confessed, even as he trailed kisses along her jaw, “I don’t want to spend any other day of my life without you, and if it weren’t for our parents then I’d stick to my word forever, and you know that I would.”

She placed her small hand on his mouth and backed away a little as more translucent droplets seeped out of her eyes. “Don’t, James, please… don’t say anything anymore,” she sobbed anew.

He gripped her wrist and gently pulled her hand away from his lips. “Why, Rose?” He put his hand in his jeans pocket and pulled out a small box in red paper. “I can’t and I won’t, not until I’ve shown you the present that I brought you.”

Rose looked at the box as her eyes widened noticeably. “James…”

“I bought you something in May, but I decided to change it three days ago,” he confessed abashedly, even as he offered it to her.

Rose looked at the red box without taking it into her hands. “James, I…”

“I don’t care about whether or not I get anything in return, Rose,” he continued calmly. “I don’t deserve anything, especially after everything I’ve put you through.”

Rose’s eyesight blurred a little with unshed tears and they refused to leave her eyes, no matter how much she tried to blink them away. “James, go away,” she murmured softly, even as her hands tensed slightly.

“Rose, don’t…”

“James, just go away already!” she cried as she raised her voice a little bit more and pushed his hand far from her, before she shuffled away from him and kept a wary distance between them.

“Why?” he asked, crestfallen at her vehement refusal.

Rose shook her head and averted her eyes from his slumped figure. “You wouldn’t understand, even if I told you,” she mumbled hopelessly.

“Try me,” he challenged, even as he reached forward and sneaked a hand around her back.

“No, James,” she whined, as she pushed him away yet again. “Please, just go away already; I can’t do it if you’re here.”

James looked at her, and it was clear that he didn’t understand a single word that she had just said. “You can’t do what?”he asked slowly, even as fear crept into his voice.

Rose shook her head for the umpteenth time as she stood up and walked away from him. “Just go away, forget me and never mention my name anymore, James,” she wept with a horribly cracked tone, “I couldn’t take it if you were here.”

James stood up as well and walked towards her, but when he tried to pull her in a hug, she resisted his movements in a way that she had never done before. “Forget you? How could I ever do that, Rose? Seriously, what are you talking about? Just tell me what to do so I can make everything alright again…”

“Just go away, then, and that’ll make everything alright,” she begged unrestrainedly, “I can’t concentrate if you’re here with me, I can’t do it if I know that you’re standing here with me, and I can’t—”

“What can’t you do, Rose?” he asked again, and his tone was just a little bit firmer than it was before.

Rose cast him a cold glance, before she turned sharply on her heels. She quickly strode towards the bedside table and opened its drawer. After a fair bit of rummaging, she pulled out a small box and, as she opened it, she walked back to James and showed the contents to her confused cousin.

James looked uncomprehendingly at the five small phials that were filled to the brim with a liquid blacker than ink or oil. James took one in his hands and looked carefully at it, but he soon found out that there was no need for his caution; the liquid was perfectly still, and even as he moved the phial, it didn’t seem to shift at all.

“What’s this?” he asked hoarsely, but his instincts already seemed to know what his mind was still scrambling to grasp.

Rose took a deep breath and exhaled it in a weary sigh. “ _Dolce Morte_ ,” she uttered softly.

James looked at her with furrowed brow and a downturned mouth. “What is it?”

“Poison,” she answered bluntly, “its name is Italian for _Sweet Death_.”

James quickly dropped the phial back into the box as if his hand had been burnt from the mere knowledge of what he had been holding, and his horror-filled gaze went to Rose’s, which was cold and calculating. “You stole it from Slughorn’s office,” he stammered incredulously, “you were the one who stole from his office, weren’t you?”

Rose nodded curtly as she closed the box and tore her gaze away from his horrified one. “Go away, James,” she half-ordered, but there was next to no conviction in her deadpanned tone.

James’ lips parted. “You’re not serious,” he breathed, half to himself and half towards her.

“I am,” she replied sharply.

“What do you want to do with it?” he asked dumbly, and Rose was crestfallen to hear a tinge of fear in his wavering voice.

She didn’t answer; instead, she turned her head and stubbornly continued to look away from him.

"Oh my God, Rose, you want to drink it,” he whispered, yet his overly quiet words were still laced with pain.

“Don’t even _think_ about breathing a word of this to anybody else,” she snapped coldly, “just go away and keep this to yourself.”

James looked at her incredulously, as if she were mad. “What?” he asked breathlessly, “what are you talking about? Is this what you really think of me?” He took a step towards her as his hands trembled violently at his sides. “Do you think that I could just go home, lie down and sleep with the knowledge that you’re going to poison yourself? Do you really think that I will ever be able to forgive myself if I walked out of your bedroom before you were going to kill yourself? Who do you think I am, a sociopath?”

“You are someone that shouldn’t be here, James,” she whined.

“I was serious, Rose, when I said that I wanted you to elope with me,” he murmured.

“We have no future, James,” she retorted hoarsely, “can’t you see that? Even if we eloped, there’s nothing we can do. The baby will be born, and we will be just a couple of teenagers, too young and too similar to look just like a normal couple.” She gazed despairingly at his features and shook her head jerkily at what she saw. “You look even more like me than you do with Lily.”

“I don’t care,” he bit back sharply, “everybody can know about us and they can talk about us all they like, because I don’t care for what other people think. I just want to spend every single moment of my life with you.”

“That’s not what you said a month ago,” she huffed dryly, “and in a month… what will it be then? Will you change your mind another time and leave me hanging again, James?”

The boy narrowed his eyes at his cousin’s suspicious questions. “If you drink that poison, Rose, I swear that I’ll kill myself as well,” he muttered sulkily.

Rose lowered her eyes to her hands, which were shaking so badly that she was afraid that the phials would break into smithereens on the floor if she didn’t put them down right away. She deposited the box onto the bedside table and plopped down onto her bed as the tears that she had tried so hard to restrain blurred her sight once again.

James walked up to her weeping form, before he kneeled at her feet and looked up into her red and puffy eyes. “Do they hurt?” he asked, but he quickly clarified his query when he got a blank look in return. “My words, I mean.”

Rose nodded stiffly and ignored the way that James’ face fell. “You came here to torture me, didn’t you?” she asked softly, but her voice was nearly lost in the broken hiccups of her sobs.

James brushed away her tears and offered a sad smile for her to see. “Do you think that you’re not making me suffer as you speak, Rose?” he replied gently. “I couldn’t survive if you died, so it’d be more correct to say that _you’re_ torturing _me_ here.”

Rose looked down into his warm eyes. “And I can’t live like this, you know,” she murmured, “my parents isolated me here, I’m sixteen and will be a mother soon, and the whole world will know that I was my cousin’s lover.”

“And if you were your cousin’s _wife_?” he rebutted quickly.

Rose sobbed loudly at the thought. “James, don’t play with me,” she pleaded pitifully.

“No, Rose, I’m serious,” he insisted forcefully. He took the present that he had offered her before and unwrapped it by himself to reveal a small velvet box and, when he had opened it, Rose saw that the plush cushion inside contained a small ring with a little diamond the size of a freckle on it. “Marry me,” he uttered, even as he offered it to her.

Rose looked at the ring with wide eyes and an open mouth. She was well beyond crying now, because she was far too surprised to eke any more salty droplets out of her eyes. She thought she had known James intimately, but since the moment he had Apparated in her room, all her certainties about him had started to shatter and fall down around her ears, one after the other. “You… you… you can’t be serious,” she stammered doubtfully.

“I am,” he retorted urgently, as he pulled out the ring from the box and slipped it onto her ring finger. It fit perfectly and, as the thought crossed her mind, Rose wondered if he had secretly measured her digit during one of the many nights that they had spent together.

Rose’s eyes shifted from the ring to James and back again, and when she moved her hand to see it, the slender band shone in the soft light of the pale desk lamp. However, she suddenly lowered it and tore her gaze away from the ring. “I can’t, James,” she murmured in a quivering tone.

“Why not?” he asked in a tone of complete stupefaction. “I love you.”

Rose pulled the ring off her finger in a swift movement. “I’ve already made my decision, James,” she uttered shortly, as she placed the ring in James’ hand and closed his numb fingers around the thin circle.

James looked at the ring and abruptly stood up. “Okay,” he started dryly, “okay, I know that you hate me now, and I can understand you, really.”

“James, I don’t—”

“No, I’m serious, I can understand where you’re coming from,” he blocked her words with his own desperate ones, “but think at our child, Rose. When I asked you to terminate the pregnancy, you almost jumped at my throat, but now you want to kill it with you.”

Rose shifted her gaze away from his accusatory one as her cheeks burned with heat. “At that time, I had thought that I was strong enough to have a baby and take care of it all alone, but I later realized that I had just been kidding myself,” she confessed in a small voice, even as she caressed her burgeoning stomach.

“You’re not all alone anymore,” James whispered softly.

“James, don’t,” she moaned in a pained tone, “please, just stop talking. I’m not going back on my word… and besides, why would I when there’s no reason to?”

“Because I love you,” he insisted, “that should at least mean _something_ to you.”

Rose continued to look away from him as a frown marred her facial expression. “There’s nothing you can say that will make me think again at my decision,” she huffed stubbornly.

James took a deep breath at her words, before he let it all out again. “Then I’ll drink the poison with you,” he decided seriously.

Rose turned her head so quickly towards him that her neck cracked in the process, but as her throat dried at his words and she tried to swallow in an attempt to wet it again, she found that she couldn’t do anything. Her head had suddenly felt far too light, while the same anxiety that she had felt two days before in front of her whole family overwhelmed her once more, yet she still managed to choke a few words out of her parched mouth. “This isn’t one of your games, James,” she warned him quietly, “once you drink it, there’s no way to go back again.”

“I know,” he snapped coldly, and crossed his arms in a show of defiance.

She took in a deep breath and held it inside of her as she struggled to come up with a reply. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I would follow you to Hell and back again, if it were necessary,” he answered calmly.

She nodded softly as a sad smile replaced her previous frown. “That’s good, because I’ve heard that those who suicide all go to Hell for their sins.”

James nodded curtly back with a seriousness that he had never shown before. For the first time in her life, Rose had the chance to see the man that had always been hidden inside the boy that she had known since her childhood.

“You know that Professor Slughorn’s office was full of poisons, right?” she asked suddenly, as if a thought had just occurred to her.

James looked at her and tilted his head slightly. “What do you mean?”

“Do you know what this poison does?”

“Are you telling me that you’ve chosen this, the _Dolce Morte_ , from a wide range of poisons?” he asked in astonishment.

Rose nodded seriously and her eyes flickered back to her cousin’s pale face. “Naturally. Do you want to know what this one does?”

James nodded again. He was strangely fascinated by the fact that she had so carefully prepared her death and, if he had been a romantic sort of person, he would’ve thought that it was like being one of those heroes that killed themselves rather than do something that they didn’t want to do.

“It makes you see your happiest moments,” she said, “before you die.”

“Happiest moments?” he asked in confusion, as he crossed his arms over his chest. “It doesn’t look like there’s anything sweet in this.”

Rose shook her head and elaborated on her words. “When you die, you are… you’re in peace, really.”

“In peace? I think that’s even more depressing than it normally would be,” he replied thoughtfully. “You’d see that your life wasn’t so bad after all and maybe, when it’s too late to do something, you somehow convince yourself that dying wasn’t really the best thing to do after all.”

“No,” she retorted harshly, “on the contrary, I think that you can die in peace if you drink this, because it allows you to remember that your life hadn’t been a completely waste of time.”

James didn’t answer her harsh retort; instead, he drew her up from the bed and looked deeply into her eyes. “I know what I would see, even without the poison,” he murmured lovingly.

Rose’s eyes abruptly shone with tears as she threw her arms at James’ neck and leaned her head against his. “I know what I’d see as well,” she confessed with a sniffle.

He kissed her almost desperately as his hands travelled feverishly up and down her back in an attempt to touch her and memorise her body with every part of his fingers. “When?” he asked against her lips, in between the frantic kisses that they shared.

She backed away a little and looked straight into his questioning eyes. “It’s either now or never,” she murmured, “I don’t think I’ll be able to do this if I wait a minute longer.”

“I have one last desire before I leave with you, though,” he mumbled, as he looked down at her with a faint glimmer of hope in his eyes. “Do you think you can grant me this one selfish request?”

“What is it?” she asked softly.

James lowered his head and pressed his lips against hers as his kiss grew more intense with every passing second in which he claimed her sweet mouth. He took a step towards her and then another and another, until she hit the edge surround the foot of her bed with the back of her knees and had collapsed onto the bed with James’ weight situated firmly on top of her.

James let go of her mouth after another long moment and leaned his forehead against her cheek, before he took her smaller hand into his own. Before she could even understand what he was doing, she felt the ring sliding back to its former place as he kissed her cheek and her lips with soft, sweet kisses that were a far cry from the desperate ones that he’d given her some moments ago. “I want to lie here with you,” he murmured, “on your bed.” He gazed deeply into her lidded eyes and kissed her temple. “And I want you to wear the light blue dress that my mum got you for your last birthday.” He brushed away some hair from her eyes. “And I want to hold you while we are dying.”  

Rose’s bottom lip trembled as some more tears slid down her wet cheeks. She nodded stiffly in return, before she hugged James once more and moulded her small body against his. “I love you,” she whispered between muffled sobs.

James hugged her back as he hid his face in her hair, before he swallowed audibly and opened his mouth to answer her declaration. “Love you too,” he replied, and his voice petrified Rose.

Because James – stoic, emotionless James – was crying.


	9. ...and a Tale of Death

***

" _How do you want to do it?_ ”

“Like we’ve always done it,” murmured Rose, as her blue eyes looked up from the buttons of the shirt that she was slipping through their tiny holes. “Nothing’s changed.”

“But the baby…”

“Will be alright,” she whispered, while she pushing the shirt off her shoulders to reveal her pale breasts and the gentle swell of her stomach. “Undress,” she told him softly, as she discarded her own clothes on the floor and stood before him.

He hurried to comply, his fingers busying themselves with the buttons and zips and shoe laces that kept all his layers of clothes clinging stubbornly to his skin. Rose simply watched him as his naked body slipped out of his underwear and he lay down on her bed. One of his hands went to stroke his erection while the other stretched out to her, with its palm facing upwards, and waited for her to take it.

When she did, he quickly pulled her onto him on the bed and made themselves comfortable on the mattress. One of his warm and strong arms wrapped around her shoulders as he brought his mouth to hers in a demanding and bruising kiss. He turned abruptly, even as they lost themselves in each other’s lips, and made her roll onto her back with his momentum. He positioned himself between her legs in a matter of seconds, and then his hands were on her waist and on her breast, and then he was slipping into her, and Rose would have flushed at how wet and ready she was for him if it wasn’t for the fact that it didn’t matter anymore. She bit down on her bottom lip to stifle a satiated groan as he nipped at her collarbone to choke his own moan of delight. His hair tickled her cheek as he started to move. He was slow and he was gentle and then he was fast and he was groaning and Rose was groaning with him and her hands flew up to enlace themselves in his hair. As their heated lips found each other’s again, Rose locked her ankles on the small of his back and urged him on, raising her pelvis to meet his thrusts.

And then, when it had almost seemed to be too much, James was coming and she could feel him pulse inside of her, and that was all she needed to release the tight coil of heat that had pooled in her stomach. Her cry of release was swallowed by his mouth and her muscles trembled with her orgasm for long seconds as her mind blanked and everything but her satisfaction lost meaning to her.

When everything was finished, a second or an hour later, Rose was finally aware of James disentangling himself from her. He fell on his side next to her and wrapped his arms around her, before he laid tired butterfly kisses onto any patch of skin that he could reach. “I love you,” he murmured in her ear, “I love you, I love you, I love you…”

“I love you too…” she breathed. “I love you too…”

***

Rose looked at James as a soft smile graced her lips, before she pushed her naked body closer to his and snuggled into his comforting warmth. Her cheeks were still flushed for the dizzying orgasm and her skin was on fire in every place that James just happened to caress her yet, though she wanted to lay down her head and sleep, she reciprocated James’ lazy and half-lidded look with her own sultry gaze.

“Do you think that we’ll see this moment before we die together?” James asked softly, as he caressed her waist with a lethargic thumb.

“I’m sure we will,” she replied with a gentle smile. She stretched her limbs luxuriously, like a cat would, and pushed on her elbows to sit up. “I have to change,” she explained as James looked intently her movements and rose as if to drag her back to bed.

James grabbed her arm anyway, before he pulled her back into his warm embrace. “I changed my mind, Rose; there’s no need for you to wear the blue dress anymore,” he whispered, even as he laid butterfly kisses against her neck.

Rose smiled and pushed him back gently, before she made to get out of the bed again. “I don’t want them to find our bodies completely naked,” she replied simply, and those plain and direct words had the power to bring James back to their cruel reality. He let her go and followed her figure with a wistful gaze as she walked towards the wardrobe and softly opened its doors.

It nauseated him to see the casual manner in which she searched through her dresses to find the blue one and slowly sang a tune under her breath as she did so. If he hadn’t known any better, he would’ve thought that she was just getting ready for a dinner with her family, or for an afternoon spent shopping with Lily.

Instead, she was preparing to kill herself. They were  _both_ going to kill themselves.

Her body and her deliciously round belly disappeared under the dress under his watchful gaze. It was a summer dress made of fluffy cotton that had sleeves to her elbows and fell just underneath her knees, and it was of such a light blue that it almost looked white under the moonlight. It fell comfortably around her waist as if it had taken absolutely no effort to wear it, and under her breasts there was a darker blue band of shining satin, which highlighted their gentle swelling.

She looked at James and smiled, before she turned on her bare feet, which made the dress billow up. “What do you think?” she asked quietly.

James bit her bottom lip as his eyes roved over her body. She was beautiful, and he couldn’t believe that this was the last time that she would ever wear this particular dress again. “You’re beautiful,” he murmured reverently in response. He kneeled on the bed and gripped her wrist as he drew her to him and made his arms slide almost possessively around her waist, before he kissed her several times, while each kiss became increasingly desperate as it met her soft lips.

James placed his hands on her legs and moved to slide the dress up, but Rose stopped him before he could and freed herself from his possessive embrace. She looked into his eyes and tucked a curly lock behind her ear, before she allowed a silent sigh to slip past her lips. “Go get dressed, James. I’ll make the bed while you’re changing,” she uttered simply, as she walked away and turned so that she could offer him his discarded clothes.

While he shimmied into his outfit, which comprised of jeans, a white shirt and a black jumper, Rose made the bed where they had just been together for their last time. The scene was slightly surreal, as if they were any other married couple during a Sunday morning and not just two young cousins that were going to kill themselves in a few moments’ time.

“Where do you want to do it?” James queried, as he broke the comfortable silence that had fallen between them after they’d prepared everything.

“Here,” she answered, though he couldn’t really hear her, since she wasn’t looking at him. Her voice was calm, as far as James could tell, but her movements were just a little too quick and betrayed a slight nervousness in her.

“In your bedroom, you mean?”

“On my bed,” she replied shortly.

“What if they find us before the poison has… worked?” James whispered, and his own voice seemed small and pathetic, even to his own ears.

Rose stopped her movements and almost made to turn towards him, but she refrained from acting upon that urge. “They won’t find us,” she replied firmly, “the poison takes less than an hour to be effective and the morning is still far away. My parents never come to see me before eight, so we’ll be fine.”

James nodded jerkily in reply.

Rose took a deep breath and straightened her back, before she looked at him with a peculiarly flat gaze. “Are you ready?” she asked softly.

“How can someone ever be ready for their death?” he retorted as he smiled sadly back at her.

Rose smiled too, though James couldn’t really decipher the emotion behind her facial expression. She sat on her bed and swung her legs over the edge so that her back rested against the bedpost, before she reached for her dresser table. As she took the box in her hands, her eyes followed James while he sat on the other side of her bed and got into a half-lying position next to her.

Rose opened the box and took out a phial, which she solemnly handed to James. He took the top off and smelled the black liquid, before he made a strange face at it.

“It smells funny,” he admitted, “I thought it would have been hideous, but instead… I almost like it.”

“I know,” she replied curtly, “it’s called the  _Sweet Death_ for a reason, after all.” She took a phial too and took the top off just as James had done, before her gaze settled onto her cousin’s face once more. “On the count of three,” she murmured, even as her gaze trailed back to her hand.

James nodded, even though Rose was no longer paying attention to him anymore.

“One,” she breathed lowly, as her hand began to lift itself upwards “two.” She closed her eyes and brought the phial to her lips. “Three.” The black liquid slid down their throats like fresh water, and it was so light that they almost didn’t have to swallow to make it flow into their stomachs. They sat still for a while with no sounds reaching their ears and no pain touching their bodies, and when they opened their eyes again they felt strange, as if nothing had changed in that time.

“How do you feel?” Rose murmured questioningly, as she continued to sit perfectly still.

“Fine,” James retorted flatly, “what, should we be feeling something?”

“I don’t know,” Rose bit back. “Maybe one phial isn’t enough.” There was a hint of panic in her voice as she continued to speak. “Maybe we should drink another one, just in case.”

“Maybe we should wait and see,” James suggested thoughtfully. He took the box from her trembling hands and she didn’t move to stop him, even as he put it on the floor near the bed and slid a little on the sheets so that he was lying down completely.

Rose looked at him with wide eyes but, when he patted the space next to his body in a wordless invitation, she slid down as well, so that she could lean her head on his arm and brush her knees over his. Their breaths were soft, calm and almost inaudible to their ears, and their heartbeats were slowing down, as if they’d just drunk a camomile tea instead of something toxic.

James’ hand slid slowly over Rose’s belly before they came to twine themselves through her fingers near her navel. With every breath that she took, her stomach would rise and lower in a soothing and strangely enchanting rhythm and, for a moment, James felt the urge to scream and cry at the same time. He wanted to stand up and run to his aunt and uncle’s bedroom so that he could tell them everything and beg them for an antidote… but he couldn’t. Rose would have never forgiven him if he did.

Rose’s eyes closed slowly while distant bells solemnly tolled three times in the chill morning air. She took a deep breath and, as she did so, she finally felt the poison’s effects as a blinding pain spread from her stomach to the rest of her body. She shifted slightly on the bed as she squeezed her bottom lip in between her teeth. If she cried from the pain, everybody in the house would have come in her bedroom and interrupted them, and she didn’t want to risk going through all this again, not when she had already come so far.

A tear managed to escape through her thick eyelashes as her hand instinctively flew onto her belly and pressed gently down on it. In that moment, she knew that she was alone once again. It was a strange feeling, as if she could breathe freely again after her month of agony, and she was almost sure that her parents would have talked to her like nothing had happened the next time she saw them. It was almost like drinking that potion and killing her baby had just been a purifying act all along, and now she was as chaste as they had thought she had always been because of the poison.

A second later, though, her mind filled with a deep sorrow. She had gotten used to the little creature that had been growing in her belly. It was hers and she was its, after all, and they shared something that no one, not even James, could understand… but now she had killed it and there was no way to go back anymore.

She sniffled and tried to swallow the tears that she had never imagined she would shed when she planned her death in the middle of the night. She felt James’ hand squeezing hers but she couldn’t squeeze it back, because her body totally petrified while her mind was abruptly sucked in the great power of the  _Dolce Morte_ .

Images flashed behind her lowered eyelids like the scattered pieces of a puzzle, the puzzle of her happiness. There was the first time her parents had brought Hugo home from the hospital… her fifth birthday spend in a Muggle cinema with her parents… her first day of school… James when he kissed her for the first time… Albus and Scorpius, as they asked her if she wanted to go to Hogsmeade with them after she had gotten into a fight with James… Scorpius when he told her that he loved her… and then James, James and yet again, James. Their first time, their last time, when they cuddling together, as the two of them hid in a closet at the Burrow, when James would soothe her fears away with his words and tender caresses… and, strangely enough, the moment when she had discovered that she was pregnant with James’ child.

But, like every artefact of the Dark Arts, even something which should have been as sweet as its name suggested was still fishy and deceitful, because the last image that she saw was something terrible, something that almost physically broke her heart when she saw it. It was something that had not yet happened, something that would have occurred if she didn’t drink that poison, and something that now wouldn’t have happened anymore, because of the path that she had chosen to travel along.

She was half-lying on a white bed with a couple of needles inserted into her arm… which, oddly enough, didn’t hurt her as much as she’d expected it to. She also wore a numbered plastic bracelet on her wrist and a pale white nightgown that was far better than a typical hospital gown, and her hair was all over the pillow and her sweat-covered forehead. She was pale and tired, but she was smiling contently and, when she felt a weight near her on the bed she instinctively knew that James was next to her, even without her turning around. A woman walked up to them with a bundle of white covers cradled gently in her arms, but soon she bent over them and relinquished the bundle to her instead.

The baby was the smallest and most beautiful thing she had ever seen. He was stretching his little arms towards her, while his chubby fingers closed erratically around thin air and, once she’d torn her gaze from the thin and reddish hair on his delicate head, she noticed that there was also a small bracelet with the same number she was wearing around his wrist. His pink complexion was spotted with freckles, and though his eyes were still closed, his pink mouth was wide opened. Rose turned towards James, who kissed her on her lips, before they both looked fondly upon their small baby and marvelled at his appearance.

Rose was exhausted and she felt her belly stinging with pain, while her throat was completely dry and hurting her terribly from how much she had screamed but, for some strange reason that she couldn’t understand, she had never been happier in her life. However, for just a moment, she opened her eyes and met James’ sleepy ones, but for some odd reason he seemed perfectly fine. She tried to open her mouth to tell him something, but nothing left her lips. As blackness surrounded her and choke off her words, she closed her eyes again, and never opened them up again.

***

An irrational thought swam through James’ mind as his eyes lingered on Rose’s still form; it had something to do with the way he could feel Rose’s life slipping away from his hands. She was leaving him, just like how particles of sand would escape from his tightly-clenched hands and spiral away with the wind when he stood as a little child on the seashore and played with the sand liberally littered there. However, though he tried to close his hands and encircle her body as much as he could, it didn’t matter how hard he tried in the end, because there was nothing he could do to stop it. He knew that the baby had already left them, because he had felt it leave… and now Rose was slowly and painfully dying in his arms too.

He felt still quite fine, though he had not yet started to see his happiest moments, but instead of feeling fine as well, Rose was already dying before he could. How long would it have taken him to follow her into the final oblivion? He hoped it was sometime quick, because he didn’t want to stay away from her for too long. That was a suffering far more terrible than dying, in his opinion. James closed his eyes and concentrated on dying as quickly as possible, while his eyes welled up with tears at the unfairness of his situation. He didn’t mind dying at the same time as her, but he didn’t want to be forced to see her leaving the living world before him. So when some vignettes of his life started to flash before his lowered eyelids, he welcomed them with unashamed relief.

There was Lily at the bright age of five, when she had drawn his portrait under a title that said  _Draw your hero_ … there was the first time Albus had asked him to explain a word that he didn’t know… there was Rose, and her expression during the first time he’d kissed her… he saw his mother, when she had woken up in the hospital after falling down from her broomstick during a match… his father when he told him that he was proud of him… Rose in her blue dress… Rose at Christmas… her happiness as she opened his very first present for her… Rose naked in front of him, in all her natural beauty… Rose smiling as she looked at him in the Great Hall… and the images continued to flicker quickly through his mind.

But the potion didn’t spare James, just as it hadn’t spared Rose, so the last thing that James saw was something that might’ve been. He saw himself helping Rose clamber down the tree next to her window and then watched as they walked silently through her moonlit garden. She laughed for a moment and he playfully shushed her, and they strode in silence until they were in the deserted street that brought to the centre of the city from Rose’s quaint house. They were barefoot, but they didn’t mind. The cold wind was slapping their faces harshly, but they were laughing joyously anyway.

They were running away, just like he’d planned; somehow, they had summoned up the courage to run from everything and everybody to a place where just the two of them could live happily ever after. They didn’t care where they were going and they didn’t care if they were going to be caught, for that night was a taste of freedom to them. They would have reached the closest church and married, they would have run until the airport and flew away, and they would have never come back to their families ever again, but it wasn’t important to them anymore. They were together, which was all that mattered, and nothing would have taken that from them.

Suddenly, as the vision disappeared, a pain numbed James’ limbs and his fingers convulsed forcefully around Rose’s waist. He swallowed hard, but his mouth remained dry, before a barrage of sounds crashed over him.

He had thought everything was over, but how could he have been so wrong?

In his final moments, as his eyelids lowered themselves over his sight once more, he heard the door burst open and someone screamed as a pair of strong arms grabbed him and yanked him away from Rose. He tried to open his mouth or resist, or to do _anything_ to stop what was happening, but his body refused to obey his orders.

And then, just as his mind seemed to comprehend what was going on around him… everything faded away.


	10. Falling Apart

***

Albus pushed his covers away and stood up from the bed, before he purposefully kicked his slippers away with his bare feet and padded noiselessly towards the door. He pressed his body against its wooden panels and silently eased the handle down as his cooling soles entered the colder hallway and pressed upon the icier slats in the floor, and it was in this fashion that he stole past the bathroom and stopped in front of a door. It was a wooden door, just like the other ones that there were lined across the landing… but this one had always been closed as of late.

Albus brought his fist near it and knocked slowly once, fired out two others quickly and then rounded it off with another slow one. It was such a soft noise that, for a heart-stopping moment, Albus was afraid that he had just imagined that he’d knocked and had, instead, not knocked at all. However, that was what he thought every night and yet, without fail,  James would open the door to him every time.

Not that night, though. No, tonight had been far different, because nobody had answered Albus’ distinct knocking in the middle of Christmas night. He knocked again, slowly, quickly, quickly, slowly… yet nothing happened. He bent down so that his face was near the handle and tried to peek through the keyhole, but all he could see in James’ bedroom was darkness. Could it be that he had forgotten about staying up to meet him? Or maybe he was so driven to desperation by the thought of not seeing Rose on Christmas day that year, as he had confided to Albus earlier that week, and he’d gone to do something reckless to compensate for his desperation.

Albus had been astonished by all of James’ confessions in the past few days, if he had to be entirely honest with himself. He had never seen this caring part of his brother, which he had mistakenly thought to be non-existent. Until that very moment, Albus had been sure that his elder brother was the kind of boy that would have never had a girlfriend for more than a month and would have simply suggested a large drink of Butterbeer in his company as the solution to making everything all right again… or someone, that would have left his girlfriend without thinking twice if he’d somehow found out that she was pregnant with his child.

“But you really had sex with Rose?” Albus had incredulously asked the first time James let him in his bedroom. His mouth had been open and his green eyes were blown wide open with curiosity; after all, he hadn’t believed what his parents had told him and he wanted to hear it from his brother’s own mouth.

James had looked at him with a hard expression, but had eventually caved in and given him a response. “Yes, I did,” he had replied in a flat tone.

“And she’s pregnant with your child?”

James had nodded curtly at the second question. “I thought that Mum and Dad had already told you everything,” he had growled coldly, though this hadn’t deterred his younger brother in the slightest.

“They have, but I didn’t believe them,” Albus had uttered simply.

James had swallowed a piece of cheese that Albus had brought him and had looked away, but done nothing else to acknowledge the younger Potter’s statement.

They have been like that since the day James had been confined to his bedroom; it was their little secret and sometimes, when Albus received some news from Hugo about their mutual cousin, he told them to his brother. However, after a couple of days, James hadn’t wanted to listen to anything concerning Rose anymore, and he had started to speak even less than he already did.

So, when James didn’t answer Albus’ knocking that night, the youngest Potter boy simply thought that his brother just wanted to stay by himself. How could he blame him for wanting to mourn for his situation on such a day?

“What are you doing?” a voice murmured curiously at Albus’ back.

Albus started and spun to look at the little girl who was standing just behind him. “It’s none of your business,” he hissed curtly to his sister.

“You want to go and talk to James, don’t you? I know already,” she whispered rapidly, and Albus thought that her eyes shone in the night like those of a cat.

“You don’t know anything,” Albus growled back, “go back to your bed, Lily.”

“I want to come with you,” she continued stubbornly, ignoring her brother and glaring defiantly at him. She crossed her arms and took a threatening step towards Albus.

“I’m not going to see James,” Albus insisted snappily.

“Yes, you are,” Lily snapped back irritably, “I can hear you talking every night, you know.”

Albus’ eyes widened a little at his sister’s words. “You didn’t say anything to anyone about me visiting James, did you?” he asked quickly.

Lily looked highly offended at his lack of faith in her. “Who do you think I am?” she hissed peevishly. “Of course I didn’t. However, I really want to see James right now, so I’ll really call Mum and Dad if you don’t let me see him as well.”

“You said you weren’t that kind of person… and besides, you wouldn’t dare to,” Albus angrily snapped back.

Lily bit her bottom lip and hardened her gaze. “Try me.”

Albus glared at her. “James isn’t opening the door, so you can’t go in anyway,” he informed her coldly.

“You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not!”

Lily gritted her teeth and glared straight back at her brother. “Yes, you are!” She stomped her feet on the floor and growled furiously in annoyance. “You and James are just—”

“What are you two doing out of your beds at this time of the night?” Harry appeared on the landing that brought him to his children’s rooms; his hair was even messier than usually, while his tired eyes were half-closed behind his rather askance glasses. “It’s Christmas night; you should be in your beds, not arguing in the middle of the corridor.”

“We were fighting for the bathroom,” Lily responded promptly, causing Albus to jerk his head towards her in surprise. “I got out first to use it, but he’s being bossy.”

Harry nodded distractedly. “Just stop making all this noise, okay? Your mother and I were sleeping,” he mumbled tiredly. “Go to the bathroom and then straight to bed.”

Lily and Albus nodded silently, but they didn’t move from their positions.

“Well?” Harry asked, as he gestured to the bathroom.

Albus elbowed Lily in her ribs.

“Yes, Daddy,” she piped up primly, “goodnight!” With that, she disappeared into the bathroom.

“Yeah, goodnight,” Albus echoed vaguely, before he padded to his bedroom and closed the door behind his back.

Harry listened to his son’s steps as they faded away from the door and, when everything was silent again, he found himself glancing briefly at James’ door in the few moments that it took for him to walk towards the stairs. However, instead of continuing on to his warm bed, he stopped with a hand on the railing and glanced back at his eldest son’s door. It was Christmas night, for Merlin’s sake! What was he supposed to do with James? What James had done was terrible, but he was his son, after all, and it was the most important night of the year. Would it have been bad of him to walk into his bedroom and wish him a Happy Christmas, regardless of what he’d done? He was sure that Ron wouldn’t have done something like that with Rose, thanks to his vindictive nature, but he wasn’t Ron and they had raised their children in a slightly different way… even if, at the end of the day, they had reached the same disastrous result.

He took a deep breath and strode back towards James’ door. He knocked softly and waited for a few moments, but no answer came from the bedroom. “James, it’s me,” he whispered softly, so that he wouldn’t disturb his two other children, “are you sleeping yet?” He waited again, yet he still heard nothing. He knocked again, a little less patiently than last time, but James’ room was just as quiet as ever. Finally, when he could wait no longer, Harry took a deep breath and unlocked the door with the Unlocking Charm.

It had been one of Ginny’s ideas to prevent Albus and Lily from using magic outside of school, so they couldn’t have cast that simple spell… which meant that, no matter what they did, they could be kept away from James without too much fuss on his or Ginny’s part. Of course, the possibility of James willingly opening his door to his siblings had never really crossed his or Ginny’s mind.

The door opened with an inaudible click and Harry quickly made his way inside. “James, are you sleeping?” he asked again. No answer reached his ear, even when he repeated his question in a slightly louder tone, but it only took Harry a few seconds to realise that something was not quite right with the pervasive silence in the room. “James?” he called again, even as he turned on the lights.

He was stunned into a state of pseudo-paralysis when he saw the scene before his eyes. The bedroom was a mess as always, but James was nowhere to be found amongst it all. “James,” Harry called again, but his voice was higher and more nervous than it had been before, “if this is some sort of twisted game that you’re playing, then it’s not funny. Where are you?”

Nobody answered him.

Harry rushed out of James’ bedroom and stormed into Albus’, before he unceremoniously strode up to his younger son’s bed and bent over him. “Where’s James, Albus?” he snapped quickly.

Albus’ eyes abruptly opened in response to his father’s words. “What?” he asked in a surprised tone. “How would I know where he is?”

“What’s happening?” Lily interjected curiously from the door.

Harry turned towards her with a deep frown etched onto his lips. “Where’s James?” he asked curtly.

Lily glanced briefly at Albus to see if she had to say something to cover up for something that they had done, just like they have taught her to do so, but Albus shrugged his shoulders with widened eyes and shook his head at her. “I don’t know,” she finally mumbled, “why? Is something wrong?”

Harry ignored her question as he stormed out again and shouted Ginny’s name from the landing. When a few minutes had passed, Ginny finally made her appearance on the stairs, with her body wrapped snugly in her nightgown and her face etched with sporadic lines left from the pillows when she had been sleeping. “What is it?” she asked sleepily, even as she wiped blearily at her eyes and fixed a watery gaze onto her agitated husband.

“Where’s James? Have you seen him?” Although Harry knew that Ginny had been asleep until only a few minutes before, he was far too anxious to realise the inane nature of his query.

“What?” Ginny answered, as puzzlement began to break onto her face. “No, no I haven’t… but Harry, what’s happened?” There was a hint of panic in her voice as her eyes widened and were swallowed in fear, just like how the tide overwhelmed the shore in its wake.

“He’s not here,” Harry fretted, even as he gestured towards their eldest son’s door with his shaking hands. He glanced at his other children with a mixture of emotions roiling in his eyes and almost seemed to look through them, before he finally focused onto their sleepy forms. “Where is he?”

Albus shook his head jerkily, scared by his father’s tone. “I really don’t know, Dad,” he confessed in a barely-audible whisper.

“What were you doing in front of his door, then?”

“We wanted to see him,” Lily piped up in her tiniest voice, “but he didn’t answer, even when we made a racket outside his door.”

“How long have you been trying?” Harry pressed urgently.

“Oh, Harry, what’s the point in questioning them?” Ginny interjected despairingly, as she shook her head miserably and turned away from her younger children. “Did you hear him walking away? Did you hear the door banging? He’s obviously Disapparated, Harry.”

Harry stared at her for a long moment, as if he was trying to understand what she was saying, and his gaze refused to waver, even when Ginny began to shift uncomfortably in her unsure position on the stairs. He thought that he had shut his son in an inescapable ivory tower, where he was constantly kept under control, but James had simply been staying there of his own voluntary will… and now that he didn’t want to stay there anymore, he had simply left without a word to anyone of his intentions.

“Where can he…” Harry’s words died in his throat as soon as they’d made their way out, he knew perfectly well where his son was. The thought of the Burrow, King’s Cross Station, Diagon Alley or any other place on Earth didn’t even brush his mind; in fact, he was so sure that James was at Ron and Hermione’s place that he mentally kicked himself for not having thought of the possibility earlier.

Ginny nodded distractedly at the forming horror on Harry’s countenance. “What should we do?”

Harry’s expression instantly darkened at her query. “I’m going to get him,” he barked angrily, even as he turned on his heels and attempted to rush past his wife on the stairs.

Ginny grabbed his arm before he could leave, though. “I’m coming too,” she informed him rather forcefully. “Ron will kill them if he finds them together,” she elaborated, when Harry’s face continued to express nothing to her, “so we’d better talk to Hermione first.”

Harry raised his chin defiantly and glared at Ginny. “Why? Do you think I’m not angry?” he hissed.

“Yes, you are,” Ginny replied slowly, “and I am too. He disobeyed us, and he had surely brought a world of pain onto Rose if Ron ever finds them together. However, I don’t want Ron to use the Killing Curse on them just because they were together in the same room, and I want to make sure that, no matter what happens, my son is still as safe as we can ensure him to be.”

Harry quickly looked away when he’d finally registered Ginny’s sensible words. “I won’t let that happen,” he murmured in a chastised tone, before he turned towards his children and looked darkly at them. “Go to your bedrooms and don’t you dare leave them until your mother and I are back.” Lily and Albus hastily nodded and disappeared into their own bedrooms, thanks to the fact that they were too flabbergasted at James’s blatant disobedience of their parents to offer any sort of resistance to their parents’ words. When their two younger children were finally safe in their rooms, Harry and Ginny Disapparated from the landing without further ado, before they Apparated into the dark living room of their relatives in the blink of an eye.

Ginny wrapped the nightgown tightly around her body and edged closer to her rigid husband. “Harry,” she whispered, “let’s wake them up before we do anything, okay? I don’t want to act like a thief in my brother’s house.”

Harry nodded in agreement, before he walked past the stairs and reached for a wooden door situated behind it. They knocked on the solid panes as Harry called Ron and Hermione’s names a couple of times, but it took a while for them to receive an answer from the slumbering couple. Finally, after what seemed like forever to them, some steps on the other side announced that someone was coming to open the door.

Hermione appeared on the door with her hair in a vaporous cloud of disarrayed brownish curls as she rubbed at her tired eyes and tried to focus on the blurry people in front of her. “Harry,” she mumbled thickly, after a while had passed, “Ginny. W-What’s happening?”

Before either Harry or Ginny could open their mouths to answer her, Ron had abruptly appeared behind Hermione. “What are you doing here?” he asked sleepily, though it came out a bit more rudely than he had intended.

Harry and Ron exchanged a cold look, before the former dropped his gaze to the floor and kept it there. “We can’t find James,” he blurted out.

“What do you mean, you can’t find him?” Hermione asked, though her voice was already becoming nervous and fearful with every passing word.

Ron didn’t wait for an answer; instead, he roughly elbowed his way past his sister and his brother-in-law, before he quickly strode towards the stairs.

“Ron, wait!” Ginny screamed frantically from behind him. “Don’t do anything to them!”

But Ron didn’t listen to her; if anything, Ron wasn’t listening to anybody at all in that moment. He was simply walking and walking, while blood pounded furiously in his temples as he thought of his nephew and his daughter together under the same roof where he was sleeping.

In no time at all, Ron found his shaking hands unlocking the door to Rose’s room and pushing it open but, before he could enter its dark confines, Harry had grabbed his arm and pulled him backwards from the entrance. “Ron, remember that she’s your daughter and he’s your nephew, okay? No matter what you find in there, you can’t kill them,” he hissed darkly.

Ron wordlessly struggled to free himself from him, as if he were a man possessed, and barrelled inside when Harry finally loosened his grip on him. He saw their figures on the bed and immediately threw himself at James, before he forcefully grabbed his arms and yanked him away from his daughter. James’ eyes opened slightly and his fading gaze found his uncle’s for a split second… but then closed again as he fell, like a broken marionette, into Ron’s rigid arms.

For a moment, there was such an unnatural silence that all four of them had briefly thought that they had gone deaf. Ron’s gaze slid over his daughter’s lifeless body while his arms still stubbornly held onto James, and in that moment, his heart skipped a beat and threatened to collapse on him. However, when Hermione let out a shriek, time restarted around them again and everybody was forcefully brought back to their unspeakable reality.

Ron turned towards Harry with his eyes flung wide open in horror and fear and guilt. He opened his mouth but, when he finally made his dry mouth form some words, he didn’t recognize the raspy voice that escaped from him. “St Mungo’s,” he tried to force out of his unresponsive vocal chords, but the words fell on deaf ears when he Disapparated with his dying nephew in his arms.


	11. No Turning Back

***

For a moment, time seemed to slow down.

Healers were running everywhere, while people were screaming frantically, and someone was crying within earshot, though nobody could tell who it was. Ron felt a hand on his arm before a bushy-haired head gently slumped onto his side and revealed beautiful cheeks profusely stained with tears. Harry was placing Rose in the Healers’ arms and both of them seemed not to notice that her dress was covered in blood from her calves to the hem or that there was still blood down her frail legs. Someone had taken James from his arms at some indeterminate period of time, but Ron could still feel his warmth against his chest as he closed his fists, almost as if he was trying to feel him there in the rapidly cooling air. Things happened in that dream-like block of seconds or minutes or hours, but none of it seemed to sit right in Ron’s frozen mind.

Words were spoken, but he didn’t know who said them. Someone said  _abortion_ , someone screamed  _poison_ and someone else cried their names, but they were a blur of static in Ron’s malfunctioning ears. Ginny was standing next to him with her hands to her mouth and her eyes impossibly wide, while colour steadily drained from her face as she followed the Healers with her eyes… but Hermione was no better. She had sunk her head onto Ron’s arm and he could feel her tears through his pyjamas as she tightened her grip on his arm and sniffed but, though there were obvious signs of grief flowing through his sister and his wife, he could do nothing to force his mind to move.

Ron felt gentle hands on his shoulders as someone was pushing him and Hermione towards a bench. He struggled to get away with sluggish, half-hearted motions and, as he turned to look at the young Healer that was pushing him, time started to run away at its normal speed again.

“I want to see them,” Ron begged brokenly, “she’s my daughter.”

The Healer looked at him as if she was really sorry for him, but her clinical demeanour stubbornly stayed put. “I will let you know what’s going on as soon as I’ve been informed of the details,” she said professionally, “but for now, you can wait here.”

“Don’t tell me to wait!” Ron cried furiously, though there was next to no fighting spirit left in his voice. “I want to see them.” Hermione sobbed louder and leaned against the wall at her back, as if she couldn’t bear to stand or do anything to support herself in any way.

The young Healer looked over Ron’s shoulder and met Harry’s eyes. “Please,” he added and, though his voice was more controlled, the same desperate light shone clearly in his pupils.

The Healer looked back to Ron and, for a moment, her stern expression seemed to falter a little. She bit her bottom lip and deliberated silently for a moment, before tilting her neck in a nervous gesture. “Follow me,” she sighed wearily, even as she turned away and began heading off. She guided them through an aisle near the door through where the Healers had disappeared with James and Rose’s bodies and stopped in front of a wall covered with a heavy curtain where she stood perfectly still for a moment, before turning towards the four of them. “Don’t bang on the glass; they cannot hear you anyway,” she warned quietly, but she looked at Ginny and Hermione as she mentioned most of this, “It might be quite a painful view that I wouldn’t advise any of you to watch.”

“I don’t care,” Ron barked curtly. He was speaking for himself, due to the fact that he’d completely forgotten about the other three people with him but, though he wasn’t forcing them to stay and look, no one was walking away… and so he assumed that they wanted to stay too.

The Healer nodded slightly at his reply, before she took out her wand and waved it towards the curtain. The thick material slid apart to uncover a huge window that overlooked what seemed to be an emergency room. Hermione was the first to react to the scene that was revealed to them; she let out a strangled cry as she frantically rushed towards the window and threw a desperate hand onto it, as if she was trying to go through it by sheer willpower alone and reach the other room, where her child was.

Healers were running, screaming and gesturing around two beds in the other room, of which Rose’s one was placed closer to the window and the other one, with James lying upon it, was a bit further away. They had been disrobed so that James was only in his underwear while Rose was wearing just her knickers, which were soaked with blood, and her small body was displayed mercilessly to the cold and emotionless eyes of the Healers. Soon enough, the scene before him became too much for Ron and, with a heavy air to his movements, he walked up to Hermione and put his hand onto her shoulder. She put hers over his and squeezed it weakly in acknowledgement, before she tilted her neck and brushed her wet cheek lightly over the back of his trembling hand.

Ginny found the support that she needed to stay up from her husband, and it was fortunate that Harry was far sturdier than her because she seemed ready to faint any moment now. Her knuckles were deathly white on Harry’s arm and, though she was surely grasping painfully at her husband’s upper limb, Harry didn’t seem to notice her iron-like grip; his green eyes were too intensively fixed on what was going on in the room on the other side of the glass to notice the slow numbing of his arm. Just like everybody else.

Healers were busying themselves around their children’s bodies as the stricken parents watched in rigid dismay. There were at least five people around each bed, but they kept on moving and changing places so much that it was almost impossible to count them; in fact, the troubled observers wouldn’t have been able to count them, even if they were more lucid in their thoughts than they were now. The Healers had their wands in their tightly-clenched hands and were pointing them to the still bodies as a woman entered with some vials clutched in her hands, before everybody looked intensely at her while she rapidly fired off a few words. However, once she’d ran away, the Healers’ gazes focused back onto Rose and James for a few long moments, before they pointed their wands at their motionless bodies and the children’s smooth skin broke in a thousand places.

“No!” Ginny wailed brokenly, as she tore her gaze away from the harrowing sight. Blood was flowing from their throats, wrists, chests and legs, while a Blood-Replenishing Potion was simultaneously forced into their mouths and down their throats. Someone screamed for a Bezoar, but some of the Healers shook their heads; nonetheless, despite some muted protests, a Bezoar was brought and stuffed it under their tongues.

The woman that had previously been holding the vials came back into the room at this point in time but, instead of talking more, she speedily paced towards the Healers that were surrounding Rose and handed over an ampoule of a greenish liquid. “It was the  _Dolce Morte_ ,” she fired off quickly, “and the vial has been opened for three hours.”

One of the Healers whipped his head around to look at her. “It’s been too long,” he cried, “we have to hurry; where’s the antidote?” She gave him the ampoule and, within a matter of seconds, the liquid was brought to Rose’s mouth. It was a miserable scene to watch; Rose’s perfect skin was covered with dozens of wounds and a copious amount of blood. Around her mouth there were traces of the potions that had been forced into her sallow mouth, her body was perfectly still and she looked like she would have never waken up from her dreamless slumber.

The same antidote was then poured into James’ mouth as everyone breathlessly watched on, and some of it slid down his chin and onto his chest, leaving green traces like oil on an imperfect, marred canvas. His red hair was sticking to his head like flames around his forehead, and his skin was pale like wax in the places that weren’t broken with scars and blood. He didn’t move, even as they willed him to show some sort of movement… his limbs were stiff and still, as if life and hope had already left them.

And then it happened, and it was terrible to watch.

The Healers around Rose slowed their movements on her body as minutes crawled by, while their glances to each other became longer and more meaningful. Eventually, though, the Healer that had poured the antidote down her throat raised his head and shook it lightly. He pocketed his wand and took a deep breath to steady himself, before carefully fixing his gaze on someplace other than the glass and announcing solemnly, “She’s gone.” The other Healers stopped their ministrations, one after the other, and stood still for a moment; to the people outside, it seemed as if every one of them were probably thinking about whether there was anything else left to do for the departed soul.

Hermione’s eyes widened and her gaze clouded over for a heartbeat, before she began to move again. “No!” she screamed, even as she threw herself against the glass and began hitting her palms on it. “No! No!” She threw herself against the window again and again in a desperate frenzy while hitting it, in a last-ditch attempt to get into the room. The only thing that was on her mind was that she had to touch her daughter, hug her close and do anything she had to in order to bring her back home with her, because this was just a nightmare that couldn’t have been real.  “My baby!” she screamed despairingly. “Rose! No! Rose!”

Ron’s arms were wrapped around his wife before she could even understand what was happening and, with strength that neither he nor his wife knew he’d possessed, he pulled her towards him and made her turn away from the glass as the Healers covered the broken and irreparable body of their daughter with a cold white sheet. He held her firmly, even though she was trying to get away from him… because she was his anchor and he knew that, without her, he’d lose himself in the abyss of despair as well. He didn’t let her look at Rose but he himself couldn’t keep his eyes away from her figure, not even when her body was hidden under that sterile sheet.

They felt like their lives had reached the very end for them at that point in time, and it was like there was nothing else after that moment. Their grief was so unbelievably intense that there could have been nothing else that was worse than this and, for a stupid moment, that thought chilled and comforted them at the same time.

Then everything came shattering around them as one of the Healers screamed, “He’s alive!”

Hermione’s eyes widened as she stiffened and backed away from Ron, before they both caught a glimpse of Harry and Ginny, who were hugging each other and crying. They were doing the exact same gestures, but their expressions were different. They had lost a niece, but their son was alive; even in the depths of her sorrow, Hermione could tell that they were  _relieved._

Hermione jerkily turned to look through the glass and saw that James had his eyes open. Despite his near-death experience, his fingers were moving, albeit a little slowly and, as a Healer was telling him what to do, he responded to him. He closed his fingers around the Healer’s hand. He blinked. He  _breathed_ .

For a soul-crushing moment, Ron and Hermione felt the worst sensation ever. Their nephew was alive, yet they weren’t happy. The fleeting thought that it wasn’t right and that it wasn’t fair for their nephew to be alive crossed their numbed minds. A daughter for a son… that was the unspoken and bitter notion that had wormed its way into their minds. They would have wanted him to be dead, as dead as their daughter was, if it meant that they could have Rose back. Why weren’t Ginny and Harry feeling the same pain that they were feeling? They needed to share their agony with someone else, because it was too much for just the two of them to bear alone.

Hermione let out a strangled cry and collapsed in Ron’s arms as her sight blurred with tears, before her head pressed against his chest and she unconsciously gripped his pyjamas to yank at them. Ron hugged her back just as reflexively, but his mind and his unfocused eyes were somewhere else as they followed the slow movements of his nephew. For a moment, everything Ron had ever known didn’t exist for him anymore. For a moment… love and hate were just one feeling.

And then time slowed down again, and everything went black.


	12. Suspended Forever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last scene of this chapter was inspired by a scene in the book/film "The Virgin Suicides". I love that book.

***

Scorpius collapsed on his bed as the piece of parchment noiselessly fluttered onto the floor and, for a moment, his heart stopped beating in his too-tight chest. Could six simple words change his life so abruptly? Yes. Yes, they could, it seemed.

> _Rose is dead. Funeral on Monday._

Scorpius’ mind blanked as the words stared back at him. This was some sort of cruel joke, wasn’t it? Rose had told Albus about their little quarrel out of sheer anger and had asked her cousin to concoct some far-fetched story that would upset him, and this had been the end-product of their mischief. He had gotten a stupid letter saying that the girl that he loved was dead because of said girl’s spite. That couldn’t have been real… of course it couldn’t be.

It was a cruel joke and a bad one at that, because Albus hadn’t even bothered to waste his time with making up some sort of explanation about her sudden death. If this was real, he would have explained what had happened to her… wouldn’t he? He would’ve written something like  _Rose’s dead. She fell from the stairs._ Yes, that would have been a far more intelligent way to put things. Definitely. However, Scorpius inhaled sharply when his mind came up with another explanation. It could’ve been a cruel joke… or it could’ve been because Albus had been too devastated to write anything more than those few words.

Scorpius shook his head jerkily and willed away the thought. This was a joke… a simple, vindictive joke that his friends didn’t even take the time to make properly. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it because of that? Why was it that, with every minute that passed, his confidence was shaken by thousands of thoughts that doubted his logic?

The last time he saw Rose, she had been pale and unhappy. She’d been standing at King’s Cross Station with James, but she kept herself far from him. He could remember that, because he had passed by and pretended that he hadn’t seen her; instinctively, he knew that his silence would have hurt her more than a thousand of his words. But now…

Was she dead? Was she? Scorpius felt a sudden anger rise inside of him at the mere thought. He was one of her best friends so, if she was really dead, they could have spent more words on the subject. They could have given him details or helped him understand why, not leave him to flounder helplessly in the quagmire that was his own thoughts. Scorpius furrowed his brow and thought harder as he sifted through his mind. However… if she was really dead, they wouldn’t have wanted to give him details, perhaps. They would’ve spared him the minute description so that they wouldn’t say something that might have been terrible. They would’ve wanted to spare him the truth that was probably much more terrible than falling from the stairs.

Scorpius’ lips involuntarily curved into a soft smile laced with warmth and slight traces of bitterness. If Rose was really dead and Albus had found the time to write to him then he really must’ve meant something to them. Surely all their other schoolmates would have known of the news through the Prophet and… at the thought, Scorpius stopped to let all the air out from his lungs. There was a way to know if Albus was pulling at his leg or if the girl that he’d loved with all his heart was really gone forever. The Prophet would tell him of it. Rose Weasley was Harry Potter’s niece and the daughter of two important Ministry employees so, if she was well and truly dead, the Prophet was surely going to print that information on the first page. His father subscribed to the Prophet, which made things even easier for him.

Scorpius stood up from his bed and fastidiously smoothed the wrinkles from his robes. There was going to be a Christmas party at the Manor in a few hours, with lots of guests of some of the most important pureblood families of the Magic World, which was the only reason why he was dressed in robes to begin with. He liked parties but, all of a sudden, he didn’t feel like celebrating anything anymore.

He walked slowly towards the door and pushed it open, before stepping into the corridor and passing between the high rows of portraits that glared menacingly downwards at him from their perches on the walls. His feet moved faster and faster as he reached the stairs, then the living room and, finally, the dining room… but no matter how fast he moved, it seemed to him that it was taking him ages to get to his father’s study, which was where the newly arrived Prophet was surely to be found.

And there it was, as soon as he’d barged inside, on the table next to an unfinished cup of tea. The first page was a bit wrinkled, as if someone had already read it and had squeezed the paper far too tightly in his hands, but it was otherwise untouched. Scorpius looked at it as if it was dangerous… and almost as if it could have bitten his hand clean off if he touched it unnecessarily. He took a step towards it and then stopped for a moment, before he took a deep breath and seized it in his trembling hands.

“You were friends, weren’t you?” a voice quietly asked at his back.

Scorpius flinched slightly and turned to look at his father. “What?” he forced out tremulously, with the Prophet still clutched tightly in his hands.

Draco nodded towards the newspaper with a snappy motion and his face was solemn, as if he had just seen something that he didn’t like. “You and the daughter of Ron and Hermione Weasley… weren’t you friends or something like that?”

Scorpius’ eyes slid onto the newspaper, before he wished that he’d never moved them to begin with.

One of Rose’s most beautiful pictures was placed under a title that boldly announced her death to the world. The newspaper fell from his hands like the note from Albus had done upstairs, but Scorpius barely noticed it leave his grasp.

“You were friends, weren’t you?” his father repeated and, though his tone was calm, there was almost a hint of sadness in his otherwise-stoic voice.

Scorpius looked at him with his eyes opened impossibly wide. He didn’t want to answer him, because there was no need to. His father knew perfectly well that they had been friends; after all, he had spent summers talking about Rose and Albus and his father had spent hours trying to tell him that they weren’t worth his time. However, now that Rose was dead, Draco didn’t seem to be rejoicing in the departure of his son’s unwanted friend. Scorpius didn’t know if he was doing that because he was attempting to seem kind to him or because he was genuinely sorry for the Weasleys’ loss.

“Do you want to go to the funeral?” Draco softly questioned.

Scorpius’ eyes widened even more than they had before and his mouth dropped open as he stared incredulously at his father. He tried to say something, anything, to break the awkward silence… but nothing left his lips. Rose was dead. Rose was gone forever. She was gone and the last time they’d talked, he had told her that she was a horrible person. This wasn’t real.

This… was simply not fair at all.

***

Gold, red and green. Those were the colours that represented Christmas spirit… and the colours that the Weasleys had locked away this year. Black, black, black. Everything was black. Their robes, their houses, their souls… all of it was black.

They walked behind the little black coffin in their tightly-wrapped coats. The pouring rain soaked their hair so that it hung in bedraggled ribbons around their face, while their feet slid on the slimy soil that had become a shallow swamp underneath them.

There were the Weasleys, a large number of family friends and Rose’s schoolmates. Muggles and Wizards alike were gathered there. The officer was an old wizard with a wrinkled and pale face, along with a long and curly beard. He had some wonderful words to comfort the relatives of the dead but, as it usually was at such events, nobody was really listening to him. After all, it was easy for him to try and console them, wasn’t it? He surely knew thousands of words to say in such a moment, though none of them would ever come close to describing their raw emotions. There wasn’t any other grief as great as losing a daughter who had most probably killed herself in protest of her situation and brought her son with her in the process. Sweet, soothing words left the officer’s mouth so easily it was almost painful… but luckily for him, nobody cared to listen to what he had to say.

Hermione sat in the front row of chairs and wailed inconsolably, while Ron sat permanently at her side with his arm around her shoulders as he pulled her towards him and let her soaked head rest on his shoulder. They never stood up or did anything to acknowledge the proceedings but, nonetheless, Hermione’s sobbing could be heard throughout the cemetery’s sprawling grounds. Hugo sat next to his grieving parents with his face screwed up  as silent tears coursed from his lowered eyes and dripped onto his clenched fists in his lap. 

Hermione’s Muggle parents sat solemnly beside their daughter as their eyes fixed themselves onto the coffin liberally covered in roses, while Molly and Arthur sat next to Hugo. Molly still couldn’t believe that she was sitting there, under the crying sky on an awful Boxing Day afternoon, as she observed the tomb that was going to shelter the body of her beloved granddaughter. A few days before, the letter that said that Rose was pregnant with James’ child had come, and a few days later, Victoire had brought her the news of her death. Her beautiful face had been scrunched up with shock and desperation as she told her grandparents what she herself had been informed of by uncle. It was just too unreal to be true… yet no matter how hard she tried to will herself out of her nightmare, the air stayed the same in its morbid intensity.

Bill and Fleur were there, along with Percy and Audrey, George and Angelina, and Charlie. Albus was staring in front of himself without seeing anything, for his eyes were far too obscured with tears. Lily was shaking with sobs every now and then, to the point where she was completely oblivious to her brother’s arm around her waist when he tried to comfort her in the depths of her sorrow.

Harry and Ginny were sitting next to their youngest, but their actions contrasted curiously with the people around them. They weren’t crying, they weren’t moving… in fact, they seemed as if they weren’t breathing at all. To the few that knew the facts as they had really happened — there weren’t a lot of them, since the Weasleys had wanted the  _Prophet_ to stay out of their private lives — the first thought that might have crossed their minds was that they were thankful for the palpable absence of one more coffin in the solemn cemetery. Hermione and Ron just hoped that they felt guilty, but thinking that merely made themselves feel mortified and aggrieved at their own ill-will towards them.

***

“Albus.”

The black-haired boy turned and raised his green eyes to meet those of his best friend’s, but his gaze was distant and almost didn’t latch onto the boy opposite him. “Scorpius,” he replied dully.

The rain had stopped, but nobody seemed to notice the break in the dreary weather. The officer had also stopped talking, but no one in the first few rows had stood up to acknowledge that fact. The coffin had started to lower into its designated hole and some of the friends and distant relatives had lined up to express their condolences to the family of the girl. Draco Malfoy and his wife had lined up as well, though nobody cared to show any sort of surprise at their appearance.

Scorpius looked away from Albus as if he couldn’t bear to look at him. “I still don’t know what happened,” he murmured pleadingly.

Albus shook his head in a rough and jerky movement. “She’s dead, of course. Isn’t that important enough?” he snapped rudely.

Scorpius didn’t answer, didn’t turn to look at him and didn’t even bother to breathe. He waited, because he knew Albus, and he knew that the raven-haired boy had to talk to him, his best friend, sooner or later.

“Don’t you read the Prophet?” Albus added flatly. He didn’t want to talk about Rose, but his desire to remain silent was nothing compared to Scorpius’ desperate attempts to know.

“I don’t believe anything it say—”

“She was pregnant,” Albus bit out, and his words made Scorpius turn his head slowly towards him as his flabbergasted gaze focused on Albus’ slumped form. “She was pregnant with James’ child.” He looked at Scorpius, as if his clarification was paramount to the intensity of his words, and added, “My brother, James.”

Scorpius furrowed his brow and glared at him, as if he had just been responsible for cutting the air supply to his lungs. If this was the case, then she intentionally forgot to tell him that she was pregnant with her cousin’s child when she had confessed her incestuous love for James to him. For a moment, Scorpius was lost in his thoughts as he imagined how he would have reacted to her saying that, of all things, to him.

“None of us saw it coming,” Albus muttered, and a wry expression flitted across his face as he continued on, “They were quite good with keeping everything secret.”

Scorpius nodded, but his head continued to throb with pain and it was almost like he was being pulled underwater in a frozen river. He was the first person to whom Rose had told her dirty little secret. How could he feel so delighted about that in a moment like this? He felt sick at the very thought of rejoicing at that moment, yet a traitorous part of his mind couldn’t help doing somersaults in the confines of his mind. He shook his head to banish that thought and focused on Albus again. “Where’s your brother?” he asked quietly.

Albus’ demeanour seemed to darken even more at the thought of James. “He’s still in the hospital,” he answered coldly. “He survived the poison, but he’s still too weak to be released.”

“Poison?”

Albus inhaled sharply and his eyes seemed to flare up for a moment. “They both drank some sort of Italian poison. They wanted to kill themselves.” He looked away and shivered at the mere thought. “Don’t ask me why Rose died and James didn’t.”

“I won’t.”

Albus nodded curtly, before he spun away and added, “I have to go.”

Scorpius nodded back and, before he could change his mind, Albus was gone.

***

Harry took a deep breath and held it in, before he exhaled slowly and repeated the process all over again. He would have gladly confronted Voldemort again and again if it meant that he wouldn’t have to meet Hermione and Ron again. He would have fought with a million dragons before he could muster the courage to glance into his brother-in-law’s eyes, and he would have visited the Dursleys to avoid ever seeing Hermione cry again… but he had to do all that, no matter how much his mind rebelled at the thought.

He Apparated into Hermione and Ron’s garden and stood perfectly still as his eyes scanned the door in front of him. There was nothing to distinguish this from any other day in which he had Apparated to his best friends’ door. It could have been one of those Sundays when he’d asked them to join him to see his wife at a Quidditch match, or a Christmas morning of some years before, when he dressed up like Father Christmas for Rose and Hugo and Ron would do the same for James, Albus and Lily, or even an afternoon in which Hermione had invited him over for tea. However, it was none of these things that had explained his visit to their home today. It was a visit to comfort his brother-in-law and his wife for the death of their daughter... nothing more, nothing less.

He knocked on the door and, when Hugo opened it, he immediately understood that he wasn’t welcome in that house at all.

“Hey,” Harry mumbled, after a long silence had passed.

Hugo stared at him with a face that was incredibly expressionless for a child of his age. “Hey,” he replied, without moving from his position at the door.

Harry took a deep breath in an attempt to steady his nerves. “Are your parents at home?” he asked calmly.

Hugo nodded silently, before he turned away and left the door open behind him so that Harry could follow him inside. The house that he knew so well and was famous amongst their friends for its tidiness was completely different from what Harry remembered it to be like. Clothes were strewn everywhere, along with leftover food and dirty dishes. It was exactly like the last time Hermione had been away for a few days… except this time, almost everyone was at home.

Hugo stopped on the first stair and nodded towards the living room, before he disappeared up the stairs. Harry heard his bedroom door close and few strains of soft music issue from his nephew’s room, before an even softer voice and some other music that he had at first ignored sounded from the living room.

He walked slowly towards the living room, which would normally house a huge Christmas Tree and colourful decorations but currently housed nothing more than a few stray bits of rubbish on the floor and a television turned on in front of the couch, which Ron was half-sitting and half-laying on. His blank eyes stared disinterestedly at the grainy Muggle device in front of him and, for all intents and purposes, he didn’t seem aware of Harry’s presence… but, if he was, he didn’t seem to find him interesting enough to deserve his attention.

Harry slumped into the armchair next to the sofa and turned towards his friend. “Ron,” he murmured softly, just like Scorpius had done with his son’s name back at the cemetery two days before.

Ron turned his head towards him and his appearance nearly made Harry flinch backwards in shock. His beard was growing wildly, his eyes were ringed and puffy, his hair was ruffled and his clothing hung loosely on his decrepit form. He didn’t answer Harry when his eyes focused on him; in fact, he made no move to acknowledge his friend’s presence at all.

Harry opened his mouth to say something but nothing seemed to exit his trembling lips. He didn’t know what to say to the broken man before him and he doubted that he could offer anything that would help the man to begin with. He had initially imagined that he knew the right words to soothe his best friend’s pain but, now that he was sitting there, he understood that there were no words he could ever utter to soothe the bottomless anguish that a parent had for his lost daughter.

“Hi Ron,” was all Harry could say, but it sounded reedy and pathetic to his own ears.

Ron looked towards the television that Harry was sure his friends had never turned on for the past twenty years. “It was nice of you to pass by, Harry,” he mumbled tonelessly in response, though it was clear that he didn’t think it was nice of Harry to pass by at all.

Harry nodded anyway, even as he looked around himself as if he was trying to find the inspiration to say something of value to his friend. “Where’s Hermione?” was the only thing that he was capable of asking after minutes of contemplation.

“Upstairs,” Ron replied flatly.

Harry nodded again, even though it was clear that Ron neither saw nor cared for his actions. “Can I call her here?”

Ron laughed softly, but there was no mirth at all. “She won’t come.”

Harry looked towards the stairs. “Can I go upstairs then?” he asked shyly.

From the television came a fake bark of laughter, but Harry and Ron didn’t laugh or pay it any heed. Ron raised his hand dismissively and nodded uncaringly, before he pretended to immerse himself in the mundane program on the screen. For Harry, though, that alone was enough. He felt almost better now, since he understood that he wouldn’t have to meet Ron and Hermione together.

Harry stood up after he’d taken one last look at his friend. Ron didn’t move.

Living room, hall, stairs, corridor. He passed them all noiselessly until he got to the bedroom door, which was open. However, even though he could’ve just walked in, Harry knocked anyway and allowed his gaze to take in Hermione’s figure on the bed. Her body, wrapped loosely in a dressing gown, didn’t bother to stir and her hair, splayed wildly on the pillow’s surface, continued to lay lifelessly in its place. She didn’t answer him verbally either, but he walked in and started to talk to her as if he had been invited inside.

“Hey,” he whispered gently.

Hermione didn’t move to acknowledge him either. From what Harry could see, she wasn’t even blinking and her breath was so soft that it could have fooled any doctor into thinking that she was dead, rather than barely alive. Harry circled the bedroom and stood in front of her prone form, before he sat down at the feet of the bed and looked pityingly at her.

His eyes caressed her body with a soft gaze for a while, but he averted his glance as soon as he noticed that half of her left nipple was visible and that her dressing gown was sliding a bit too high above her calves to be considered decent. She didn’t seem to care if Harry saw her like that, though, if the listless expression on her face was anything to go by. She probably wouldn’t have bothered to care, even if she was naked at that point.

“Ginny had prepared some meat loaf for you, but I forgot it at home,” Harry blurted out unexpectedly, as his eyes stared guiltily down to his feet.

Hermione still didn’t move. When Harry looked towards her again, he noticed that her right hand was placed next to her face while her left one was on her waist, and that she had rings around her eyes, just like Ron’s, but hers seemed puffier than those of her husband. For a moment Harry found her to be the best personification of the word  _despair_ . She was the living definition of the moment when he had believed that there was nothing else to live for after seeing his son dying and, though the event seemed to be an eon ago, he felt as if it had happened mere moments before every time he could bear to look at Hermione’s inert body.

“Hogwarts starts in a few days. Hermione, do you want me to come and collect Hugo on the day the train leaves?” he asked tentatively.

Hermione didn’t bother to move or let him know that she was listening to him.

Harry sighed and stood up at her refusal to interact with him at all. She was making it far too obvious that she wanted to be left alone and, even if Harry had come there with the hopes of giving them a bit of solace, who was he to stay when he was so clearly unwanted? He stepped towards Hermione and bent over her, before he kissed her smooth forehead and turned to leave.

Hermione’s hand was quick for someone who had seemed nearly unconscious. Before he could do anything more than blink, she had grabbed Harry’s wrist and kept him close to her. At that moment, as Harry stared at the pale hand trapping him, she finally blinked, and her upper eyelashes were covered with trapped tears that shone between her lashes like droplets of dew on a pine branch.

“I just don’t know why,” she whispered, and her voice broken and raspy from disuse.

Harry was too surprised to react to her sudden movement and her scratchy non-sequitur, and it took him several seconds to open his mouth and get back to reality. “Why what, Hermione?” he asked softly.

Hermione took a deep breath and a tear ran down her stained cheek. “Why Rose died while James didn’t,” she murmured quietly, as if she didn’t have the energy to speak any louder. She stared into Harry’s concerned gaze and another tear slipped from the corner of her puffy eyes.

Harry looked away as the black claws of torment tore at his soul. Strangely enough, she was hurting him with her hand on his wrist, as if she had been stronger than she seemed, but he made no move to free himself from her painful grip. Harry opened and closed his mouth several times in an odd impression of silently stammering, before he could find the right words to say. “The Healers said that they drank the same quantity of poison at the same time but that it acted differently because of their different physical constitutions,” he uttered mechanically. He was sure that Hermione had received the letter from the Healer that had investigated their case, but he wasn’t so sure that she had read it… or maybe that wasn’t the answer that she wanted from him.

More tears eked out from her eyes as her gaze became even more pitiful. “I miss her,” she whispered brokenly, “I miss her with all my heart.”

Harry was prepared for anything. He had steeled himself for the possibility of being called names, being screamed at, being punched on his nose… but he wasn’t prepared for his friend’s drowning tears or the way in which Hermione was acting. “I know,” he answered dumbly, and he was surprised to feel something wet glide down his own cheek and plop down onto Hermione’s forehead. “I miss her too.”

Hermione nodded curtly, before she closed her eyes and let go of Harry’s throbbing wrist. The man stepped back and looked at her without moving as he waited for something, anything to follow what she had said. Time passed and he resisted the urge to fidget but, when she didn’t move or say anything else in the long silence that followed, Harry assumed that she was finished.

He kissed her forehead one more time and, moments after he’d brushed away his own tear, he found himself walking numbly out of the room. He left the door open, because he understood why Ron or Hugo didn’t close it before and didn’t give her the privacy that she didn’t seem to care much for. She was too desperate to not contemplate suicide and Harry wouldn’t have wanted something like that after all the heartbreak already. He wouldn’t have wanted to cry again and again so that others could leave their own sorrow behind.

Without even noticing that he had walked all the way back to the living room, Harry sat down on the armchair next to Ron and sighed to himself. Ron didn’t look at him, just like he’d done the last time he’d gone to talk to his friend. For a moment, Harry wondered if he and Hermione had talked at least once since the funeral… but, from their behaviour, it seemed quite unlikely.

“Ginny prepared some meat loaf, but I forgot it at home,” he felt the irrational urge to inform him.

Ron nodded curtly, but he didn’t bother to answer verbally.

“I talked to Hermione,” Harry added helplessly.

Ron nodded again.

“Why don’t you come over for lunch sometime?” Harry blurted out unexpectedly. “James will be home by next week and—”

“What did you say?” Ron’s red eyes widened as they looked intensely at Harry.

“To come over for lunch one of these days,” Harry replied calmly, even though he was sure that Ron hadn’t been asking about that particular topic.

“Why is James coming home?” he asked with a peculiar inflection to his tone.

Harry couldn’t define his best friend’s tone of voice. He wasn’t sure if he should feel worried or reassured by Ron’s interest towards his son, but he answered him anyway. “He’s almost completely rehabilitated,” Harry answered slowly.

Ron’s eyes watered a little, before they seemed to go completely blank. He nodded perfunctorily and turned his attention back to the television again.

Harry looked at him with sorrow and pity as the urge to stretch a hand towards him, to touch him and let him know that he was there, overwhelmed him… but he couldn’t. There was a barrier between them, a silent pact that said that nothing would have been the same, and he couldn’t find the heart to break it.

“I’m going, Ron,” Harry mumbled.

Ron nodded again, but it was more absentminded than it had been all those times before. He didn’t raise his eyes as Harry walked away, or as he stopped in the entrance hall and Apparated away. Ron didn’t even move when he heard Hermione crying harder than usually. He didn’t answer when Hugo asked him what he wanted for dinner. He didn’t listen to the television as he talked about the newest Brad Pitt’s film. He didn’t move, didn’t speak… didn’t do anything, except focus on the thought that ran through his head.

Ron… just wanted to know.


	13. The Utter and Heartbreaking Stupidity of Words

***

Ron raised his bleary eyes when Healer Thompson walked out of his office and stopped in front of him. He was a man in his mid-fifties who wore a gentle smile on his lips that complimented his piercing blue eyes and the tousled black hair which grew a little wildly on his head. “I apologise for the delay, Mr Weasley,” he murmured placidly, before he extended an arm and gestured for Ron to follow him into his office.

Ron stood up from the chair and nodded slightly. “It’s okay, really,” he managed to say in a bare whisper, as he shuffled into the designated area. The Healer’s office was extremely white, tidy and clean, as he’d expected it to be, and the only indication of a personality was in the huge bookshelf on the wall behind his desk and certificates that attested to Healer Thompson’s medical skills.

The Healer closed the door at their backs and circled around his desk, before he sat down and gestured to the chair opposite to him. “Please, Mr Weasley, sit down,” he encouraged the lost-looking man. “Would you like something to drink?” He opened a glass cupboard and peered inside, as if he didn’t remember what he could have been able to offer to his guests, but all he found were a few cups and nothing else in its sparse confines. “Water, perhaps?” he asked a bit embarrassedly, when he finally registered the lack of anything else in his cupboard.

Ron shook his head tiredly and some of his locks fell in his eyes as he did so. For a moment, he remembered that his hair had grown a bit too freely in the past days, both on his scalp and on his chin, and that his whole appearance was probably that of someone who hadn’t slept or seen a shower in months, but the thought left his mind as soon as it’d entered it.

The Healer nodded gently and continued to hold Ron’s disinterested gaze for a few long moments. “So, Mr Weasley, is it correct for me to assume that you are here to see one of my patients?” he asked awkwardly, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had fallen over them.

Ron nodded jerkily and cleared his throat when nothing came out of his mouth. “James Sirius Potter,” he rasped after a while. He looked at the Healer as if he wanted to add something else but, when he couldn’t seem to find the courage to voice his thoughts, he decided to keep his mouth closed for now.

“Ah, Mr Potter of course,” the Healer mumbled thoughtfully, as he opened one of his drawers and pulled out a pile of documents that he immediately started to rummage through. “Baker. Finsbury. Longbottom. Paley. Pinter. Potter!” he exclaimed, and eventually pulled out a document from the untidy pile in his hands.

He opened it and skimmed quickly through the page, before he closed it again and fixed Ron with a thoughtful gaze. “Yes, okay… so you were telling me that you are a relative, correct?”

“I’m his uncle,” Ron uttered tonelessly.

The Healer nodded stiffly as his eyes shone with a strange light, as if he had understood something terribly important but wasn’t willing to let him know about what it was. “I see,” the Healer ruminated slowly, “and you wanted to talk to him.”

“Is that forbidden?” Ron asked a little more heatedly than he had intended.

The Healer smiled affably and shook his head. “No, of course not, Mr Weasley,” he replied, “but since I am his assigned Healer, I have to put my patient’s health before anything else.”

Ron shifted nervously on his chair as he digested the Healer’s words and their implications. “And how, exactly, would I threaten your patient’s health?” he mumbled slowly.

The Healer took a deep breath, as if he was going to explain how to brew the Polyjuice Potion to a five-year-old child, before a tired smile wormed its way onto his face. “Mr Weasley, before I say anything else… I would like to express my condolences to you for your daughter’s death,” he murmured rather unexpectedly.

Ron swallowed thickly as his face instantly darkened. “Th-thank you,” he stuttered.

The Healer nodded understandingly in response. “I know that you must be feeling quite a terrible amount of pain right now,” he continued warmly.

Ron glared at him and prevented him from speaking any more as his eyes frosted over like impermeable shards of ice. “Do you, Healer Thompson?” he asked icily. “Tell me, now, have you ever lost a child?”

The Healer looked taken aback by his sudden question and it took a few moments for him to conjure up a suitable reply. “I-I haven’t, but…”

“And has your wife ever fallen in such a deep despair that she isn’t even aware that you’re lying next to her on your bed?” he bit out coldly.

The Healer sighed in resigned defeat. “No, she’s never,” he replied wearily.

“Then don’t tell me that you know how I feel, because you never will,” Ron hissed furiously.

Healer Thompson dipped his head at Ron’s affronted words. “I’m sorry,” he replied quietly. “I didn’t mean to offend you or underestimate your loss with my condolences, Mr Weasley.” He quickly glanced towards James Sirius Potter’s file again and cleared his throat, before he continued upon his original train of thought. “The problem is that my patient’s mental stability is constantly threatened by any external factors.” He took a deep breath. “He tried to kill himself.”

Ron looked annoyed at the heavy-hearted disclosure. “I’m well aware of that,” he snapped curtly, “my daughter died in that same attempt.”

The Healer shook his head. “He tried again,” he informed him, “two more times after that.”

Ron furrowed his brow, as if he was trying and failing to understand what the Healer was telling him. James, his tenacious nephew, he had tried to kill himself not once, but thrice. The moment Ron had understood that the boy had survived his initial suicide attempt had been like a fist in his stomach but, now that he was being informed of his unsuccessful attempts after, it felt like the air had been cut off from his lungs and a thousand cruel needles were piercing his heart at the same time.

And then, the shock smashed into him. Harry and Ginny hadn’t told him a single thing about those attempts. He felt betrayed by them… but, at the same time, he felt relieved and almost grateful that they hadn’t mentioned anything, because he couldn’t have been sure of his reaction to their words. “How?” he tried to ask, but his voice was a bare whisper that was only just audible to his own ears.

The Healer took another deep breath to steel himself for his next statement. “We had initially thought that the first time was an unfortunate accident, and that someone had gotten the daily dosage of his prescribed antidote wrong.”

“But what really happened?” Ron questioned dryly.

“In reality, he had managed to steal some bottles of the antidote, which was an act of carelessness on our part,” he informed him sadly, “we later found them tucked under his bed.” The Healer looked away from Ron and swallowed nervously. “The second time… he cut his veins.”

Ron closed his eyes to try and will away the sudden nausea he was feeling James had tried to kill himself again… but why? Ron shook his head jerkily at his thoughts. That was a stupid question to ask, and one which he probably knew the answer to already.

“Mr Weasley.”

When Ron opened his eyes again, he found that Healer Thompson was offering him a glass of water to drink. Ron stretched out his hand and took it in a numb grip, but he couldn’t find an appropriate word or gesture to thank him for his kindness. He didn’t drink it, though; instead, the water remained untouched by his lips.

“Mr Weasley,” he continued, after he’d made sure that Ron had a firm grip on the full glass, “I don’t know why you want to see your nephew and I don’t want to know, but James Sirius Potter is my patient and I want your word of honour so that I know you won’t bring up the issue of your daughter before him.”

Ron shook his head and let out a nervous chuckle at the absurd proposition. “Anything about me will bring up that issue, Healer,” he replied truthfully, though a quiet note of sorrow crept unbidden into his voice.

Healer Thompson seemed to mull over his words, before he finally nodded. “I cannot prevent you from seeing your nephew,” he sighed tiredly, “since he had been asked about the matter and, from his response, we understood that he agreed to any meetings with you. Even if his parents’ opinions differed from his, he’s of an age to make his own decisions, and what he wants is what we have to take into consideration.”

Ron let the glass of water fall onto the floor when he’d realised what the Healer had said and numbly watched as it shattered in a thousand pieces. His breathing became laborious and his face screwed up, as if tears were threatening to fall, before he tore his gaze away from the shattered glass and closed his eyes while swallowing with difficulty.

James knew that he was coming. He had thought that it would have been a surprise for his nephew, though he didn’t really care about whether it’d be a bad one or a good one for him… but now he had discovered that James knew. He had even been asked about whether he wanted to see him or not and James had accepted, which was something that Ron hadn’t ever thought possible. All of a sudden, Ron felt tired, because it felt like he was never going to win this battle.

Which battle was this again, though? He didn’t know anymore.

“Mr Weasley, are you alright?” the Healer asked concernedly.

Ron brought his hands to his cheeks and hastily brushed his tears away. “Yes,” he rasped, as he opened his eyes and nodded sharply to convey his point across, “yes, I am.”

The Healer’s expression became worried as he surveyed the man before him. Surely he was thinking that, if he had these terribly odd reactions without even seeing his nephew, he was probably going to go mental when he entered James’ room. Nonetheless, he forced himself to stand up and walk stiffly towards his door. “We can go now, Mr Weasley,” he murmured gently, before opening the door and gesturing for him to move out.

Ron looked at him blearily, as if he didn’t understand where he wanted him to go or what he was even supposed to do. He opened his mouth but closed it immediately afterwards, when he realised that he didn’t know what he was supposed to say. He mouthed a silent ‘go?’ and continued to stare at the Healer.

Healer Thompson smiled gently in an attempt to reassure the redhead. “We’re going to go and see your nephew now,” he coaxed, as he stepped into the aisle.

Ron stood up and, when the broken shards of glass tinkled mournfully under his feet, he hastily pulled out his wand and repaired it with a flourish and an embarrassed mumble. “I’m sorry,” he apologised sheepishly, before he placed the newly-repaired glass on the desk.

The Healer smiled again, though it was a little more strained than his previous one. “Don’t worry, Mr Weasley, the Hospital provides us with hundreds of those glasses,” he replied calmly, as he closed the door at their backs and began to walk away from the office.

“Good morning, Healer Thompson,” a young Healer greeted with a bright smile.

Healer Thompson nodded distractedly as he walked past her, before he turned to Ron. “You’ll be alone in the room with your nephew, but a Healer will pass by every now and then.”

Ron shook his head softly, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “You think I want to kill my nephew, don’t you?” he asked coldly.

The Healer held his affronted gaze with a mixture of embarrassment and worry. “No, of course not,” he responded a bit too quickly, “I just wanted you to know that you’ll be disturbed every now and then.” The Healer looked away. “Mr Weasley, the patient’s mind is in a very weak and unstable state,” he murmured quietly, “and I have to put his health before anything. I also have to tell you that you’ll be observed and, if we think that things are getting out of hand, we will intervene and your visit will end there.”

Ron stopped in the middle of the aisle and cocked his head curiously at the Healer’s word choice. “Who is this ‘we’?” he asked softly.

The Healer glanced away from Ron’s inert form and kept on walking as he replied. “Your sister and I,” he mumbled quietly.

Ron felt his head buzzing from the knowledge. He turned to lean against the wall and brought a shaky hand to his face as he digested the Healer’s latest words. He didn’t want Ginny to be there, and he especially didn’t want her to watch them interact without him being able to see her at the same time. He felt like a prisoner in Azkaban that had to be observed and watched closely, because they thought he was dangerous.

“Mr Weasley… if you don’t feel like doing this anymore, you don’t have to go through with it,” the Healer reminded him gently, as he doubled back to put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

Ron shook his head firmly and staggered away from his perch against the wall. “No,” he growled slowly, “no, I want to do this.” The Healer couldn’t even imagine how hard it had been for Ron to get up from the bed in which he had been looking at Hermione for the whole night, only to dress up and walk out of his house to meet his nephew. No, he couldn’t even imagine what an effort he had made, or that he couldn’t simply go back home after he’d struggled so hard to come here. Ron had to see James, no matter what anyone said, and nobody was going to stop him.

The Healer nodded and waited for Ron to start moving again, before they kept on walking down the aisle. They turned a corner and saw another row of doors appear before their eyes, along with busy Healers striding quickly to their destinations and patients that leaned heavily on their relatives so that they could stay up and escape the confines of their confining beds.

Ginny was also there. She sat on a chair next to one of the many doors with a closed book in her lap and a worried expression on her pinched face. She was looking right and left as if she was searching for someone and, when she spotted Ron and her face lit up slightly, he knew that the person she’d been expecting had arrived.

The Healer stopped in front of the red-haired woman, who stood up at once to greet him. Ron stopped beside him and looked at her and, though he tried to show no emotions at all, he wasn’t sure if he was able to pull off his stoicism well enough.

“Mr Weasley,” the Healer murmured, snapping Ron out of his thoughts, “you don’t have to worry if your nephew doesn’t…”

But Ron wasn’t listening to him; instead, his begging eyes were completely fixated on his sister in a silent plea for her to send the Healer away and talk to him alone. The fact that they were close siblings when they had been younger had meant that they had developed an uncanny sort of sixth sense that only close siblings had, which allowed them to understand what the other wanted by a significant look into the other’s eyes. However, an insurmountable length of time had passed since they last did it, because they had grown apart to the point where, in the last few weeks, their relationship had simply shattered into pieces.

“Healer Thompson, can I talk to my brother… alone, please?” Ginny asked hesitantly, while looking to the Healer with a nervous glance.

The Healer glanced incredulously at her in an attempt to gauge her response but, when Ginny nodded steadily towards him, he simply nodded back. “Sure, Mrs Potter; I’ll be just around the corner if you need me,” he mentioned calmly. He looked towards Ron and smiled warmly. “Good luck, Mr Weasley.” They shook hands briefly as the Healer stared at Ron but, when he didn’t answer him, he cast a final glance in Ginny’s direction and walked away from them.

Silence fell between the siblings. Their eyes trailed after the Healer’s figure as he disappeared through a doorway and then on different spots on the wall, as if they were trying to gather the courage to talk to each other from their respective vantage points or simply decide on what they had to say to one another.

“What are you doing here, Ron?” Ginny asked eventually. Her tone was infinitely tired and weighed down with the heavy responsibility of having to sit there and guard her son.

Ron didn’t look at her, even when her gaze finally drifted from the distant wall and onto a point that was a little closer to his face. “I want to talk to James,” he muttered simply.

Ginny sighed wearily at his words. “Why?”

Ron looked towards her as he opened his mouth to reply and stopped when he took in the look on her face. She looked tired, to the point where her eyes were red and her whole appearance exuded exhaustion and, for a moment, something dark wormed its way into Ron’s mind. His sister had her son and he was still alive, yet she felt just like he and Hermione did. Why, then, was she so sad? Why couldn’t she celebrate when he couldn’t see a reason for her to cry?

“I need to talk to him,” he repeated slowly, though he couldn’t help letting a smidgen of stubbornness creep into his statement.

Ginny shook her head frantically, before she stopped with a hand over her mouth and closed her watery eyes in an attempt to keep her fragile composure. When she seemed to be a little more composed again, Ginny looked at Ron and rasped out in a soft, hoarse voice that let him know that she would have cried, sooner or later. “I loved Rose,” she mumbled scratchily, “don’t you dare think, for even a moment, that I didn’t love her.”

Ron inhaled sharply at her non-sequitur. “Why are you telling me this?” he demanded stiffly.

“Because you still think that you lost everything while Harry and I were blessed with James’ life,” she murmured throatily, “but you’re wrong, Ron. You’re not the only one suffering deeply here.”

Ron looked away coldly as his face twisted in disgust at hearing such discourses from his sister. “Your son is alive and you’re telling me that I’m wrong to believe that you should be rejoicing?”

When Ginny finally raised her eyes to her brother, they were shining with unshed tears. “He doesn’t look at us, Ron; he doesn’t talk to us, he doesn’t react to anything at all when we are with him, he doesn’t eat,” she poured out in a rush as her voice broke from the sheer intensity of her words, “and he hates Harry because he’s sure that it was him who was the one that brought him to St Mungo’s and saved his life.”

Ron noticeably stiffened when he comprehended her words. “Tell him that it wasn’t his father who saved him then.”

Ginny shook her head with an almost desperate air. “His body might be alive, Ron, but his heart died with Rose,” she whispered despairingly, “please, don’t add to our suffering.”

Ron shifted his gaze to the door next to them as he stubbornly avoided his sister’s teary eyes. There was something around her, like some strange power or some terrible feeling, that Ron couldn’t even begin to comprehend; if he were to describe it, it was some kind of grief that he hadn’t even imagined could exist, and which had coiled tightly around his sister’s chest and didn’t let her breathe from its biting intensity.

When Ron’s sight blurred over and tears flooded over his cheeks, it was unexpected and caught him by surprise. It mortified him more than anything else, though, because he had told himself that he had to be strong, cold-blooded and unbreakable… and instead, he was breaking down in front of his sister.

When Ginny’s arms abruptly wrapped around his neck, it was a comfort so great that, for a moment, Ron’s body stiffened even more against that of his sister’s plaint form. Her long, white hands caressed his head and pulled gently at his unkempt hair in a soundless confirmation of her presence, so he knew that she was right there with him, that she shared his pain, that she was as destroyed as he was, that they were the same blood and the same flesh, and that they were going through their soul-crushing agony together.

Her hands caressed his back and, after a length of time that felt like an eternity, she felt his own hands lingering hesitantly on her shoulders, as if he was too weak to hug her as strongly as she was doing for him. He shook with sobs in her arms and she hugged him more powerfully than before to anchor him to her, so that his face was pushed into the hollow of her neck and his tears soaked her smooth skin with the burning intensity of their salt.

Ginny closed her eyes and, without her consent, twin rivulets of tears streamed down her cheeks as well. She brushed her head against Ron’s and inhaled deeply as her fingers entangled in his locks.

Ron sniffled pathetically as he cried for a few more minutes, before he nodded softly into her neck so that she knew that the worst had passed. When Ginny released him a little to give him some space, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on his forehead in a motherly gesture, while her hands went to his cheeks to brush away his last lingering tears.

Ron nodded again, before he also backed away a little and opened his eyes. Ginny was staring at him as if she knew everything and nothing at the same time. It was almost like she was offering him comfort but, at the same time, she was the one that was asking for it as well.

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” she whispered in his ear.

“No,” he murmured tiredly, “I have to.”

Ginny’s eyes gleamed with more tears as she looked away and closed them briefly. Her brow furrowed, as if she was trying to keep her tears from falling again. She nodded her consent, without being able to say anything else.

Ron nodded back before he cupped her cheeks and kissed her eyes so that he could swallow her tears and keep her from shedding them. He let her go and walked past her, and his mind faintly registered the fact that Ginny didn’t turn when he closed the door at his back. She was probably sitting back in the chair she’d been occupying before or heading towards the one-sided window, like the one from where they had witnessed his daughter’s death.

He didn’t care about what she did, really, because his attention was entirely fixated on James now.

***

“Mrs Potter,” the Healer called out as soon as Ron had disappeared into the room.

Ginny looked up from the chair where she had collapsed into, but didn’t do anything else to acknowledge the Healer’s words.

The Healer extended an arm and gestured for her to follow him. “The window is in that direction,” he murmured quietly, before he turned expectantly and waited for her to follow him.

Ginny took a deep breath and shook her head as she brought her hands to her face and covered it.

“Mrs Potter?” the Healer questioned urgently. “We’d better go—”

“I don’t want to go,” she mumbled through her hands, “I don’t want to spy on my brother.”

The Healer’s face scrunched up in worry at her unexpected comment. “But he surely wasn’t—”

“Healer Thompson.” She looked up at him. “I’m sorry, but this is my final word on the matter.” The puffy skin around her eyes was red, but her glance was resolute. The Healer nodded slowly when he realized that he wasn’t going to win this argument and walked away with a resigned expression on his face.

When he finally left her alone, Ginny sunk blankly into her chair as her heart continued to palpitate furiously in her chest.

***

Ron shut the door behind his back and cast a quick glance around himself. The room was huge, despite the fact that it was for a single person, and it was surely the best one the Hospital could offer to Harry Potter’s son. He wondered if they would have done the same with the daughter of Ron Weasley… but he immediately jerked his head and banished that thought from his mind.

Ron glanced towards the bed near the window and was finally able to look at his nephew. For a moment he stared as emotions welled to the forefront of his mind. James hadn’t been his first nephew – Victoire had been the first – but Ron was sorry to say his sister’s firstborn son had been the first for whom Ron had felt something more than distant familial love. Victoire and his other nieces and nephews were all loved by him, regardless of whether they were born earlier or later… but with James, it was different. He and Hermione had tried to have a child of their own for years and then, when Ginny had unexpectedly gotten pregnant and given birth to James, Ron had felt like he was his and Hermione’s just as much as of his best friend and his sister’s. He loved him. He was his godson. He would have been lying to himself if he’d told anybody that he didn’t love James as much as Hugo or as much as he had loved Rose, so for him to see James in this condition wounded him more severely than he would’ve liked.

Ron stepped towards the bed, where James was asleep.. or so he thought. Ron realised that his nephew was awake when he got closer, but his breath was so shallow and his chest moved so little with his breathing that he could have been dead for all he knew. He next noticed his wrists, which were covered with bandages from where he had probably cut his veins, and the two grooved bands just above them that tied his arms to the sides of the bed. At the sickening realisation that they had to tie him to the bed to keep him from hurting himself, Ron’s heart began to ache even more fiercely in his chest.

All of a sudden, Ron didn’t feel like talking to him anymore. He didn’t feel like confronting him or waking James from whatever dream he had immersed himself into so that he could drag him back into their awful reality for his own selfish purposes. When he glanced towards James again, he noticed that his face was ghostly white and seemed even more so thanks to his hair, which was ruffled crazily on his head, and his eyes, which were sunken and deeply ringed with black shadows. His freckles stood out on his skin like spots of ink or dried blood, and he looked like he was in severe need of a good night’s rest.

Ron closed his eyes for a moment and turned away from the heart-wrenching sight before him. He swallowed hard and started to shuffle back towards the door while his head buzzed unpleasantly at the thought that he was really renouncing his only occasion to talk to him. He was quite certain that, as soon as James was out of the Hospital, the eldest Potter wouldn’t have wanted to see his face, let alone talk to him… yet he was walking away anyway.

“I thought you wanted to talk to me.”

Ron abruptly stopped in his track as his eyes widened at the incredibly hoarse voice. For a moment, he’d thought that he had just imagined that sound, which was so low and throaty that the person to whom it belonged had probably just woken up from a long period spent under the influence of a Sleeping Draught… but maybe it was exactly like that. Maybe… James had actually talked to him. However, Ron didn’t turn for a number of seconds, and he only did so with a reluctant air when he heard James’ breath change and become heavier and more substantial.

When he finally turned and allowed his eyes to meet James’, Ron could clearly see his own sadness reflected and infinitely multiplied in those of his nephew’s. For a moment, his simple glance devastated him so much that Ron had to look away, lest they burnt him with their intensity.

“I thought you wanted to talk,” James repeated insistently, his voice a hoarse whisper.

Ron nodded stiffly in response. He took a few steps towards him with, his eyes suitably lowered to the ground and, when he spotted a chair near the bed, he sat down, so that he was only a few inches from his nephew’s face. He opened his mouth for a moment or two, but he closed it again without having said anything, because he was too afraid that his voice would betray some kind of unwanted emotion and thus start off his meeting with his nephew in a bad manner.

James looked at him as he waged his internal war, but didn’t speak any further words. His face was emotionless in a manner that Ron wished his own visage was, and his eyes were distant.

Ron looked away and his expression darkened when he recalled something. “Your Healer had told me not to talk about anything that might upset you,” he bit out bluntly, and his voice was much sharper than he’d initially wanted it to be.

James inhaled deeply. “He told you not to talk about Rose, didn’t he?” he asked quietly.

Ron’s jaw set in a stubborn cast. When James had said his daughter’s name he had felt an iron fist squeezing his pained heart. He didn’t like how he said her name so casually, and it showed in his voice when he answered his nephew. “He did,” he replied coldly.

“He didn’t know that it was exactly for that purpose that you came to visit me, though,” James murmured calmly. He glanced towards Ron and added, “Right?”

Ron twitched his hands in irritation as his eyes became even more distantly icy. “Did you want to talk about her, James?” he asked in an annoyed tone.

“You came here for that, Uncle, so who am I to refuse you?” James responded weakly.

“Fine.” Ron crossed his arms huffily. “But really, wouldn’t it upset you if I asked you about why you decided to kill yourselves, when you’ve started thinking about dying or how all this happened?”

James looked away then, though his face remained curiously blank. “No, it wouldn’t,” he replied softly.

Ron snorted derisively at his response. “No, of course it wouldn’t.” He shook his head and, when he next spoke, James knew that he had prepared to say the accusing words that fell out of him in a furious torrent. “It was all just a game for you, wasn’t it? Was this just a stupid game where you thought it would have been funny to see who died first, or how much we would have cried over your dead bodies?”

James tried to raise his head from the bed’s thin pillow so that he could have a better look at his uncle, but all he could do was to arch his back a little, until his wrists started to chafe at the material that was binding him down. “You see what we did and blame it on us, but do you ever see your own problem? You all think that we didn’t know what we were doing,” he snapped coldly, “and that we were still a couple of children who wanted some sort of petty revenge for treating us the way you did. You don’t realise how wrong you all are.”

“Oh, are we the bad guys now?” Ron hissed frostily. “Really, is that what you think? Because you weren’t kids at all, were you? You’re cousins and…” Ron looked away as his breath became more laboured, before he forcibly swallowed and continued thickly onwards. “You  _were_ cousins, and she got pregnant.” He shook his head. “She was underage, for Merlin’s sake.”

“I was underage as well,” James added quietly, “when we started seeing each other.”

“I don’t want to know about it,” Ron snapped icily, “I don’t want to hear anything about you two being together.”

James lowered his head onto the pillow beneath with a world-weary sigh. “Why did you come here, then, if it wasn’t to know more about us?” he asked tiredly.

“Because my daughter is dead and you are not,” Ron muttered, before he looked away.

“And you’re blaming me for that, aren’t you?”

“Shouldn’t I?” Ron hissed sharply.

“You don’t believe that I would’ve given anything to be dead so that I could be with her, do you?” James sighed as he looked out of the window, and his tone was so calm and sad that, for a moment, Ron had to fight the strange urge to hurry to his side and hug him.

“Then you’re a fool for thinking that I’d believe that,” Ron huffed miserably.

James turned to look at him with an oddly despairing gaze. “Imagine Aunt Hermione dead,” he whispered tonelessly, “imagine your life without her—”

“James, stop it,” Ron warned sternly, while he set his jaw against his nephew’s words.

“—imagine waking up without her by your side, imagine—”

“Stop it, James!” Ron cried furiously.

“—her gone with your child, with Hugo; imagine—”

“Well, I’d like  _you_ to imagine your life without your daughter!” Ron screamed despairingly, as he finally interrupted him. “Imagine seeing her lifeless body in a cold, hospital bed while they cover it with a sheet and say that she’s gone forever. How would you feel then, huh?”

James looked away bitterly at his biting questions. “That’s what you all don’t get, Uncle. Don’t you realise that it has already happened and that nothing will ever be the same again?”

Ron shook his head disbelievingly. “What are you talking about?” He hissed sharply.

“She was pregnant,” he whispered desolately, “and everybody seems to forget that.”

Ron stubbornly glared at a spot above James’ head. “You were the ones who decided to kill the baby, not us,” he snapped coldly.

“We wanted to be together,” James murmured forlornly, “in a place where nobody would keep us apart.”

Ron shook his head forcefully and squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to keep more tears from falling down and staining his cheeks. “We wouldn’t have kept you apart forever, you know,” he whispered despondently. If he could have gone back in time now, he would have never done any of the things he had done; even if he was angry at them for what they’d done, he wouldn’t have denied them their happiness and kept them apart for even a split second.

“You lost a daughter,” James growled, his voice low and miserable, “I lost a cousin, a friend and a lover all at once.” He shook his head blearily as his eyes glazed over. “I lost everything.”

Ron stood up and turned on his heels. “You still have your life, you silly boy,” he cried bitterly, “you still have all of your family waiting for you when you recover again.”

“I don’t have anything left!” For the first time James’ voice was raised higher than that of his uncle’s. “She took everything away with her when she died!”

Ron abruptly spun back and stomped furiously towards him. “Your parents are out there and they’re desperate because you’re not even looking at them anymore,” he screamed in an irate frenzy, “and you dare to claim that you don’t have anything! What did they ever do to deserve your hate?”

James tore his gaze away from Ron as his eyelashes quivered and shone with restrained tears. “They didn’t let me go with her,” he whispered brokenly.

Ron’s jaw squared at his admission. “You hopeless child,” he hissed, even as he shook his head, “it was me who brought you here.”

James turned his head towards him as his eyes widened with incomprehension. “What?” he mouthed incredulously.

“It was me; I was the one that Apparated you to the Hospital,” Ron bit out, and his eyes were almost like two pieces of ice in his pale face.

James shook his head frantically. “No,” he groaned, “no, you’re lying, you have to be. It was Dad who—”

“Your dad brought Rose here,” Ron cut him off coldly, “and I brought you.”

James’ head, which was raised from the pillow by several inches, thudded hollowly back onto the bed. His back tensed as he strained his arms upwards in an unsuccessful attempt to free himself and physically confront his uncle. “Why did you come here to torment me?” he screamed in a feral tone, while his breath increased with the effort he started to use as he thrashed violently on the bed. “What do you want from me?”

Ron stepped towards him and grabbed his shoulders fiercely. “I want the truth, James,” he cried loudly, as he pushed his body against James’ to stop him from pulling at his wrists, which were starting to bleed for the massive amount of energy he’d exerted in his attempt to throw himself at Ron.

James’ muscles strained against his uncle’s body but his resistance didn’t last long, thanks to his weakened body. Ron waited until his struggles melted in soft sobs before he dared to loosen his grip on him.

“Why did you come here?” James whined again, while tears wetted his cheeks. “Why do you want to torture me when I’ve already suffered more than enough?”

Ron looked down at him and, for a moment, time stopped as their eyes met. James’ tears froze on his face as he looked into his uncle’s eyes… because, for the first time in his entire life, he was looking into the eyes of a grown up man who was crying,  _really_ crying, without saving any of his dwindling dignity in front of his horror-struck nephew.

Ron sniffed loudly and let out a sob, before looking away and brushing his eyes furiously, as if he had just understood how unacceptable it was to be seen crying in front of his nephew. “I-I wanted to know…” His voice died in his throat as he sobbed harder and fought to rein in his sorrow again. “I wanted to know if it was Rose who was the one that had stolen the poison.” He withdrew from James and collapsed onto the chair next to him as his hands brushed roughly at his own face. “I want to know if she hates me… if she hated me so much that…”

James looked at him breathlessly as the understanding that he couldn’t bear to inflict his uncle more pain than what he already felt settled in his brain. Rose hadn’t hated her father, that was not it, she had just felt powerless at the realisation that she had lost control over her life. She hadn’t told her cousin, she hadn’t told anybody, but James knew, he just knew. “No,” he finally whispered, and his voice was unrecognisable, even to himself.

Ron raised his eyes to him, without being able to see him through his tears, and waited for him to continue.

“No,” James continued a little more strongly, “it was me.” He understood that, if he said that Rose wanted to live, his story would have abruptly become very unbelievable, so he left out all the details regarding her involvement in her death. “I stole the poison from Professor Slughorn’s office, I brought it to your house on Christmas night and I asked her to die with me.” James sniffled as the weight of his words sunk in. “I’m sorry,” he whispered hoarsely. Suddenly, he was taking his cousin’s place and her subsequent fault in the story… and suddenly, he was becoming the one that had wanted to take that decision.

Ron stood up from the bed as he began to shake imperceptibly, before his eyes widened and he looked at James’ frail figure. He nodded as he turned and, before James could add anything else to his fabricated tale, he strode numbly out of the door and almost bumped into the Healer that was entering with a tray of antidotes in her hands.

While the Healer excused herself and fussed over him, James saw his uncle leaving and heard his mother’s voice call out to him. Sadly, he thought that he hadn’t given the right answer to his uncle’s question, but then… what was the right answer for all of this?

…And really, was there _even_ a right answer to all of this? He couldn’t tell anymore.


	14. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the epilogue of the story. It takes place two years after the rest of the story.

***

_Two years later…_

Ron casually leaned against his bedroom door as a midnight blue tie loosely dangled from its perch around his neck. He smiled softly as his gentle gaze followed his wife’s slathered hands, which were rubbing circles of white moisturizing cream up and down her face.

Hermione glanced at Ron’s reflection in the mirror as she finally noticed his presence. “What do you want?” she asked, as a soft smile appeared on her lips.

Ron shook his head and pushed off the wall, before he walked towards her with a mild smile. “Nothing,” he murmured, before he tilted his face downwards and lightly kissed her neck. He looked at her reflection next to his face and whispered, “Should there be a reason for me to watch my beautiful wife in the moon’s ethereal glow?”

Hermione smiled and lowered her eyes bashfully at his words. “I’m not beautiful with moisturizing cream all over my face and a ponytail,” she admonished laughingly.

“You know that I think that you’re always beautiful,” he replied lovingly, before he stood up and padded away from her dressing table. He loosened his tie so that his neck could pass through it and, once he was finally free of its restricting fabric, he threw it onto the bed with a quiet huff. “The Hogwarts Express arrives tomorrow afternoon,” he hummed softly, “you can’t make it, right?”

“Sure I can,” she answered just as softly, “I would never miss my son’s arrival if I could help it.”

Ron stopped unbuttoning his shirt as his mind registered her words, before he cast a worried glance in her direction. “Didn’t you have a meeting in the afternoon?” he asked thoughtfully.

Hermione hesitated for a moment, but she eventually answered his query. “Yes, I did,” she said gingerly, as she freed her hair from its messy ponytail and started to brush it, “but it’s okay, really. I can take a day off from work and come with you, you know.”

Ron finished unbuttoning his shirt and draped it over the chair as he fixed his wife with a concerned gaze. “Hermione, you—”

Hermione’s brush paused in midair as she raised her eyes to look back at him. “Ron, don’t…”

Ron bit his bottom lip as he forced back the words he’d been meaning to say, before he guiltily looked away. He took off his trousers, put them over the shirt and walked into the bathroom without another word, and Hermione heard the basin filling with water and subsequent noises that let her know that her husband was brushing his teeth. After a few minutes had passed, Ron emerged from the bathroom with a green towel, which he was vigorously scrubbing his face with. “Listen, it’s great that you want to come to pick up Hugo; really, I find it touching that you’d want to take a day off for his sake,” he said to her when he was done drying his face and had sat down on their bed in his underpants.

Hermione looked at his reflection in the mirror and frowned. “But?”

Ron looked away from her searching gaze, before he cleared his throat and replied to her. “But I took the day off to go there, so you don’t need to do that yourself,“ he informed her.

Hermione smiled wryly at him. “I want to go there, though,” she argued, “yes, I know that I have a meeting, but I can call it off and go with you.”

“Hermione, you can’t take another day off your job,” Ron sighed tiredly.

“Why can’t I?” she asked lightly. “You always used to complain about me working all day and, now that I’m finally relaxing a little more, you’re complaining about that too.”

“You called two meetings off last week, you only went to your office in the morning the week before, and the week before that you—”

“Yes, I know that,” she interjected with slight annoyance, as she raised her voice and lowered her brush so that she could fully concentrate on him, “but I’m tired, and Healer Strout said that it’s okay for me to relax a little about work and other things.”

“She also said that you shouldn’t stop working like you did last year,” he rebutted firmly.

“I’m not going to stop working,” she cried indignantly, before she stood up and turned towards him. “I’m just tired.”

“You’re always tired,” Ron informed her flatly.

“I’m  _not_  always tired, Ron,” she stated huffily, “I just happen to be tired right now.”

“Hermione, we’ve already talked about this… or don’t you remember anymore?” he asked sweetly. “You need to work, you need to keep your head busy and most of all, you need to go out. Remember the times when you locked yourself in the house and refused to go outside? That wasn’t good for you.”

Hermione shook her head. “I’m not going to lock myself in again, Ron,” she sighed as she unbuttoned her dressing gown and folded it onto the chair so that it lay next to her husband’s trousers. “I just need to slow down a little.”

“It’s good to slow down, but you can’t let yourself stop again,” he gently murmured.

Hermione looked away and, for a moment, her bottom lip trembled slightly and her vision blurred. “I know,” she whispered quietly, while hating the fact that her voice was shaking so much, “but I’d love to just… stop.” She brought a hand to her face and hastily brushed the welling tears away, because if she started to cry then it would have taken a while for her to stop again.

She heard Ron standing up as she wiped at her face but, before she could even dry her watery eyes and glance towards him, he pressed his body against hers in a comforting hold. His arms slid around her back as he hugged her and, when her shoulders had stopped quivering, he lowered his head and brushed away her hair with his hand so that he could press his cheek against her head. “I know,” he whispered back in a miserable voice, “but you can’t do that.”

Hermione gripped his arms with her hands as she snuggled back into him. “Ron…”

“I’m here, Hermione,” he whispered comfortingly.

Hermione brushed her eyes against his bare skin and examined it for a while as she calmed herself down, before trying to answer him. “I miss her,” she murmured and, though her voice was a little steadier, it was still frayed around the edges.

“I know, Hermione, and I miss her too,” he murmured back, “but there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Hermione nodded against his chest as she sniffled softly, and her slight movement caused her hair to tickle his skin.

“Do you want me to call Healer Strout for a session?”

Hermione backed away from him a little bit and stared hesitantly into Ron’s blue eyes. “Do you think I should, though?” she asked with a soft note of uncertainty.

“Only if you want to,” he assured her.

She nodded and thought for a moment, before she replied. “Then no, I’d rather not,” she muttered.

“Are you sure?” he asked concernedly.

“Yes,” she asserted, as she brushed away the remainder of her tears, “yes, I can manage this. I don’t need to see a shrink, because I’m fine. I’m not crazy, Ron.”

“Never dreamt of saying it,” he assured her.

Hermione smiled wanly at him. “I know,” she whispered. Ron hadn’t been the one who had insisted about her seeing a Healer therapist; on the contrary, he had been the one that had refused to take her to see one for the first two months, and he had only given his grudging consent when she had started to feel better. She stood on her tiptoes and lightly kissed him. “Are you going to come to bed now?”

Ron smiled warmly at her happier mood, before he turned towards his closet. “I’m going to put on my pyjamas and then I’ll come.”

Hermione climbed onto the bed and drew the sheets to her chest. “Are you going to collect Hugo by car tomorrow?”

Ron smiled and climbed in beside her, before he shivering slightly when her cold feet brushed his warm ones. “Yes, that was an option.”

“You can pass by the Ministry after you’ve been to King’s Cross,” she suggested thoughtfully, “I missed him in these past months, you know, so it would be nice to see him sooner rather than later.” She rolled onto the other side of the bed and allowed Ron to spoon her from behind. As he sneaked an arm around her belly and held her tightly against him, he leant forward so that he could breathe in the scent of her hair, which had been impregnated with all the evening’s various smells. The scent of the flowers that Hermione’s parents had decorated their house with, the tea and chocolate biscuits that they’d shared with them and the mint-scented eau de toilette that she had spread over her skin after her shower wafted pleasantly into his nose.

“I’ve missed him too,” he replied sleepily. There was a comfortable stretch of silence that spread between them, in which their breaths came out slowly and softly like caresses in the dark, before Ron broke it by casually adding, “I almost forgot, Hermione. Ginny and Harry invited us all to their house for dinner on the weekend.”

Their comfortable spooning dissipated as Hermione stiffened in his arms. “Really now?” she muttered tonelessly, as her voice suddenly tightened with concern.

“Yes… and this time, we should really go,” he whispered firmly, while his arm also tightened around her belly, as if his subconscious was preventing her probable escape. “You do remember that this was also part of your therapy, right? Healer Strout told you to talk to them again.”

“I’m talking to them already,” she protested feebly.

“Christmas cards and Ministry meetings do not equate to talking, you know,” he replied sweetly.

“Healer Strout invited James to a session once, but he didn’t come,” she murmured stubbornly.

Another pregnant silence followed Hermione’s statement and, for just a moment, she foolishly thought that her husband was going to let the subject drop and wish her good night. “It’s James,” he uttered abruptly, instead of a welcome reprieve.

Hermione’s head tilted  towards him as her mind raced at his words. “What?” she tried to say, but she found herself just mouthing her incredulous word instead. Her eyes widened in the dark room as she tried to make out her husband’s expression, but it was inscrutable under the darkness of the night.

“It’s James who wants to see you this time,” he murmured against her cheek.

Hermione turned around again and sank her head in the pillow. “I-I can’t…”

“Of course you can, Hermione,” Ron whispered to her, as if she were a frightened child and he her protective parent, “I’ll be there with you, and we’ll talk together. You are not alone, so you’ll get through this just fine, okay?”

For a brief moment, Hermione considered crying again, but then she dismissed the thought as her hand covered Ron’s and her fingers intertwined with his. “I know,” she whispered in a frail tone, as her voice shook slightly, “I love you, Ron.”

“Love you, too, Hermione,” he replied softly. He rested his head in the hollow of her neck and kissed the warm skin beneath his lips. “I love you, too.”

Fin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this. Hopefully I will be able to post the prequel and the sequel soon - they are either one-shots or two-shots, depends on how I decide to post them. Thank you for your support, for the comments and the kudos. They all made my day!
> 
> If you liked this pairing, I am currently writing an extremely long Rose/James story - I'm half-way through it -, it's called "The Perfection of Imperfect Love". It also has all the Weasley/Potter next generation characters, eleven major plots and a myriad of sub-plots. It'll be around 600,000 words. I don't know when I'll be able to post it, though. But stay tuned for the heart-breaking sequel of "Not Now, Nor Never" and its fluffy prequel, those will come soon!


End file.
